LIBRARY  OF  THE  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 

PRINCETON,  N.  J. 

PRESENTED  BY 

the  Estate   of 

Finley  DuBois  Jenkins 

tr 

BV    660    .W4 

Wishart,    Charles    Frederick 

1870-1960. 

The    range    finders 

The 


vA 


Range  Finders 

a  message  to  the  ministry 
by/ 

CHARLES  FREDERICK  WISHART,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

President  of  The  College  of  Wooster 


With  an  Introduction  by 

EDGAR  P.  HILL,  D.D.,LL.D., 

General  Secretary  of  the 
Presbyterian  General  Board  of  Education 


Philadelphia 
The  Westminster  Press 

IQ2I 


Copyright,  1921,  by 
F,  M.  Braselman 


To 

My  Father 
WILLIAM  WISHART 

Aly  Brothers 

WILLIAM  IRVINE  WISHART 

JOHN  ELLIOTT  WISHART 

My  Grandfather 
SAMUEL  IRVINE 

My  •Uncle 
SAMUEL  GLASGOW  IRVINE 

My  Cousins 

SAMUEL  ELLIOTT  IRVINE 

WILLIAM  WISHART  WILLIS 

JOHN  MILLER  WISHART 

My  Nephew 
WILLIAM  LIGGLIT  WISHART 

All  mitiisters  of  God  herr  or  beyond  the  veil 

I  dedicate  this  little  volume 


Contents 


PAGE 

I.  The  Background       ....  13 

II.  The  Supreme  Appeal        ...  21 

III.  The  Supreme  Fraternity       .  29 

IV.  The  Gospel  of  Labor      ...  39 
V.  The  Range  Finders  ....  49 

VI.  The  Inner  Chamber        ...  57 

VII.  Crosses  and  Compensations    .       .  67 

VIII.  The  Trumpet  Call    ....  81 


Introduction 

Think  of  Isaiah  advising  lads  to  decline  the 
prophetic  office  because  of  the  smallness  of  the 
pay!  Imagine  Paul  suggesting  that  young 
Timothy  give  up  the  work  because  congregations 
are  unappreciative,  or  a  Spurgeon  leaving  his 
pulpit  to  sell  bonds!  It  is  unthinkable.  Those 
men  were  real  prophets  of  God.  They  were  under 
divine  compulsion.  ''Woe  is  unto  me,  if  I  preach 
not"  was  the  cry  of  every  one  of  them.  They  did 
not  belong  to  a  profession  with  certain  standards 
of  dignity  to  maintain,  and  with  specified  remun- 
eration for  service.  They  were  the  called  of  the 
Lord,  who  went  to  the  day's  task  as  they  began 
their  life  work,  by  seeking  the  counsel  of  him  who 
is  invisible. 

Preaching  is  always  in  danger  of  becoming  petty, 
for  the  reason  that  it  is  so  easy  when  thinking  of 
reasons  and  rewards  to  confuse  the  adventitious 
with  the  essential,  to  mistake  secondary  things 
for  things  fundamental.  To  young  theological 
students  the  sermon  seems  all  important.     The 

7 


INTRODUCTION 


discourses  of  great  preachers  are  analyzed  and 
copied  as  if  when  homiletical  skill  had  been  at- 
tained a  great  preacher  would  necessarily  result, 
unmindful  of  the  truth  so  startlingly  expressed 
by  Augustus  Hare  that  "In  preaching,  the  thing 
of  least  consequence  is  the  sermon."  Some 
regard  fitting  gestures  and  a  trained  voice  as 
prime  requisites  of  success  in  the  pulpit,  attach- 
ing greater  importance  to  a  course  of  instruction 
in  elocution  than  familiarity  with  the  Word  of 
God  or  the  closet  of  prayer.  No  orator,  popularly 
speaking,  was  that  little,  weak-eyed  Jew  of 
Tarsus.  But  what  a  preacher  he  was!  With 
unerring  insight  Phillips  Brooks  was  distinguish- 
ing between  the  vital  and  the  casual  in  preaching, 
when  he  said:  "It  is  so  easy  to  be  a  John  the 
Baptist  as  far  as  the  desert  and  cameFs  hair  and 
locusts  and  wild  honey  go.  But  the  devoted  heart 
to  speak  from  and  the  fiery  words  to  speak  are 
other  things." 

A  rare  privilege  is  granted  when  a  man  of  power 
consents  to  reveal  the  sources  of  his  strength. 
President  Wishart,  himself  so  splendid  an  ex- 
emplar of  his  own  ideals,  gets  back  to  funda- 
mentals in  his  explanation  of  the  place  of  the 


INTRODUCTION 


preacher  in  modern  life.  He  knows  how  to  speak 
for  God,  other  preachers  delighting  to  sit  at  his 
feet  and  learn.  From  a  large  and  varied  store- 
house of  information  and  after  a  long  and  valuable 
experience  as  preacher,  teacher  of  preachers,  and 
college  president,  he  is  qualified  to  lead  his  readers 
to  the  sources  of  power.  The  title  of  his  book, 
'The  Range  Finders, '*  is  a  figure  of  speech  that  in 
itself  is  of  far-reaching  significance.  In  the  Great 
War  among  the  choicest,  most  daring,  most 
patriotic  of  our  brave  lads  were  those  who  were 
eager  to  enlist  in  the  air  service.  The  danger  of 
it  only  fascinated  them  the  more.  The  pay  was 
altogether  inconsequential.  The  opportunity  to 
do  a  big  thing  for  country  and  humanity  was  the 
determining  factor.  Far  up  in  the  sky,  apparently 
apart  from  the  roar  of  guns  and  the  dash  of  troops, 
the  range  finders  are  indeed  the  eyes  of  the  army 
whose  business  it  is  to  watch,  to  locate  the 
enemies'  forces  and  movements,  to  indicate  dis- 
tances, and  report  the  tides  of  battle.  The 
preacher  is  a  range  finder.  In  a  sense  he  must 
detach  himself  from  the  conflicts  of  the  mart  and 
halls  of  legislation.  But  only  in  a  sense,  since  he 
is  a  vital  factor  in  the  fight.    It  is  for  him  to  ob- 


10  INTRODUCTION 


serve,  to  detect  the  danger  spots,  to  report,  and  to 
counsel.  No  place  in  the  battle  plan  is  more 
fraught  with  danger  and  none  is  of  greater 
strategic  importance.  In  these  days  of  world- 
wide peril  and  bewilderment  there  is  urgent  need 
of  more  range  finders  passionately  devoted  to  the 
Lord's  cause,  skillful  and  unafraid. 

Edgar  P.  Hill 


THE  BACKGROUND 


A  mighty  fortress  is  our  God 
A  bulwark  never  failing; 
Our  Helper  he  amid  the  flood 
Of  mortal  ills  prevailing: 
For  still  our  ancient  foe 
Doth  seek  to  work  us  woe; 
His  craft  and  power  are  great, 
And,  armed  with  cruel  hate, 
On  earth  is  not  his  equal. 

Did  we  in  our  own  strength  confide, 
Our  striving  would  be  losing; 
Were  not  the  right  man  on  our  side, 
The  man  of  God's  own  choosing: 
Dost  ask  who  that  may  be? 
Christ  Jesus,  it  is  he; 
Lord  Sabaoth  his  name, 
From  age  to  age  the  same. 
And  he  must  win  the  battle. 

And  though  this  world,  with  devils  filled, 

Should  threaten  to  undo  us; 

We  will  not  fear,  for  God  hath  willed 

His  truth  to  triumph  through  us: 

The  Prince  of  darkness  grim — 

We  tremble  not  for  him; 

His  rage  we  can  endure. 

For  lo!  his  doom  is  sure. 

One  little  word  shall  fell  him. 

That  word  above  all  earthly  powers, 
No  thanks  to  them,  abideth; 
The  Spirit  and  the  gifts  are  ours 
Through  him  who  with  us  sideth: 
Let  goods  and  kindred  go. 
This  mortal  life  also; 
The  body  they  may  kill: 
God's  truth  abideth  still, 
His  Kingdom  is  forever. 

Martin  Luther 


I 

The  Background 

"I  would  be  a  big  man  if  I  would  be  on  the  job, 
Mr.  President."  So  spoke  an  eager  and  impor- 
tunate German  butcher  from  the  city  of  Chicago, 
whose  friends,  as  ignorant  as  himself,  had  per- 
suaded him  to  apply  for  a  post  in  the  diplomatic 
service.  The  gentle  McKinley,  always  suave  and 
kind,  had  intimated  that  the  applicant  was 
scarcely  ambassador  size.  But  the  undaunted 
seeker  after  great  things  replied  with  these  words, 
which,  though  they  did  not  secure  an  office,  ex- 
pressed in  homely  form  a  living  truth.  It  takes 
great  tasks  to  make  great  men. 

I  am  persuaded  that  the  one  factor  which 
dwarfs  a  minister  more  than  any  other  is  his 
failure  to  realize  the  breadth  and  size  and  sweep 
of  his  task.  William  Carey  wrote  to  a  friend  con- 
cerning his  son  who  had  taken  a  diplomatic  post, 
that  he  had  "shriveled  up  into  an  ambassador." 
If  a  minister  has  but  caught  the  vision  of  his  great 
office  as  an  ambassador  of  the  King  of  kings  the 

13 


14  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

greatest  posts  of  earthly  distinction  will  seem  poor 
and  mean. 

Consider  the  breadth  of  his  background.  See 
his  work  over  against  the  sweep  of  the  past. 
There  are  those  who  indict  the  past  wholesale, 
and  find  their  hope  of  future  progress  in  complete 
divorce  from  it.  But  we  cannot  indict  the  past 
without  at  the  same  time  indicting  ourselves, 
because  we  are  the  products  of  the  past.  If,  then, 
you  bring  a  railing,  wholesale  accusation  against 
all  the  thought  and  thinkers  of  the  days  gone  by, 
you  have  cut  the  ground  from  underneath  your 
own  position,  and  have  vitiated  your  own  judg- 
ment by  the  repudiation  of  the  very  sources  out 
of  which  your  own  thinking  had  its  beginnings. 
No,  it  is  worth  while  for  us  to  get  an  estimate  of 
the  minister's  task  in  the  light  of  the  days  gone 
by. 

Look  at  the  heritage  of  the  Christian  minister. 
Scan  the  family  line  of  the  sons  of  the  Spirit. 
There  are  those  who  live  on  their  family  line. 
There  are  others  who  try  to  live  up  to  it.  And 
there  are  perhaps  those  who  strive  to  live  it 
down.  Every  preacher  who  looks  back  over  his 
family  line  in  the  glorious  record  of  the  prophets 


THE  BACKGROUND  15 

views  an  inheritance  which  he  dare  not  live  on, 
which  he  need  not  live  down,  and  which,  if  he 
could  but  live  up  to  it,  would  incomparably 
broaden  the  range  of  his  service. 

In  the  old  prophets  we  find  men  who  did  their 
work  with  a  serene  and  unconquerable  confidence 
that  God  was  back  of  them.  They  were  not 
always  great  men,  nor  were  they  even  always  men 
of  great  faith.  But  they  were  men  of  at  least  a 
little  faith  in  the  great  God.  Here  was  Moses, 
one  of  the  first  great  preachers,  receiving  his 
commission  and  shrinking  from  it,  crying  "Who 
am  I,  that  I  should  go  unto  Pharaoh?"  But 
God  gave  him  the  true  angle  for  every  preacher's 
attitude  toward  duty  when  he  replied  in  sub- 
stance, "Moses,  the  question  is  not  who  you 
are,  but  who  I  am."  And  then  he  gave  him 
the  warrant  of  the  ineffable  name,  "I  am  that 
I  am." 

No  matter  who  Moses  was,  back  of  him  was 
the  self-existent,  the  independent,  uncaused,  first 
Cause.  When  Beethoven  learned  that  Napoleon 
had  made  himself  dictator  of  France  he  tore  the 
dedication  sheets  of  his  "Eroica  Symphony"  into 
fragments,   cast  them  on   the  ground,   stamped 


16  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

upon  them,  and  exclaimed,  ''Can  it  be  that  he, 
too,  is  only  a  common  man?"  But  the  old 
prophets  did  not  dedicate  their  work  to  any  man. 
God  was  their  Hero.  They  spoke  of  him  and  for 
him.  Fearless  and  valiant,  they  stood  up  from 
generation  to  generation  witnessing  for  God 
whether  men  did  hear  or  whether  they  did 
forbear. 

So  they  were  called  prophets,  literally  "the 
mouths  of  God."  And  their  mission  can  only  be 
understood  against  a  background  of  God's  definite 
covenant  with  a  nation  and  with  themselves. 
So  close  is  the  union  between  Jehovah  and  his 
prophets  that  the  messenger  not  infrequently 
loses  himself  in  his  message  and  utters  God's 
words  in  the  first  person  singular — and  this  quite 
naively  and  naturally,  as  if  the  personal  ego  were 
for  the  time  absorbed  in  a  higher  consciousness — 
his  soul  becomes  the  meeting  place  where  God 
speaks  to  Israel.  Isaiah  hears  the  thrilling  call 
of  his  God,  in  the  midst  of  a  great  national  crisis, 
saying,  "Whom  shall  I  send,  and  who  will  go  for 
us?"  and,  surrendering  himself  to  God,  receives  his 
commission  by  the  authority  of  his  master,  "Go, 
and  tell  this  people,  Hear  ye  indeed,  but  under- 


THE  BACKGROUND  17 

stand  not;  and  see  ye  indeed,  but  perceive  not." 
Amos,  the  farmer  boy  and  herdsman  and  fruit 
gatherer,  says,  "Jehovah  said  unto  me,  Go, 
prophesy  unto  my  people  Israel."  Ezekiel  hears 
that  voice,  "Son  of  man,  I  send  thee  to  the 
children  of  Israel."  Jeremiah  shrinks  from  his 
task  in  terror,  shrinks  from  it  like  the  young 
Methodist  preacher,  smitten  with  stage  fright 
on  the  occasion  of  his  first  sermon  before  the 
bishop,  so  sorely  smitten  that  his  tongue  clave 
to  the  roof  of  his  mouth.  It  was  a  rough  and 
ready  age,  and  the  bishop  was  a  rough  and  ready 
agent.  "Young  man,"  he  said,  "you  go  ahead 
and  preach  or  I  will  give  you  the  worst  thrashing 
you  ever  had  in  your  life."  So  the  young  man 
preached,  and  afterwards  became  a  bishop  him- 
self. Jeremiah,  frightened  in  like  manner,  cried, 
"Ah,  Lord  Jehovah!  behold,  I  know  not  how 
to  speak;  for  I  am  a  child."  But  Jehovah  said, 
"Say  not,  I  am  a  child;  for  to  whomsoever 
I  shall  send  thee  thou  shalt  go,  and  whatsoever 
I  shall  command  thee  thou  shalt  speak.  Be  not 
afraid  because  of  them;  for  I  am  with  thee  to 
deliver  thee,  saith  Jehovah."  This  was  the 
thrilling  consciousness  that  ran  through  the  whole 


18  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

line  of  the  prophets.  Little  men  sometimes, 
timid  men  sometimes,  but  theirs  the  power  of 
Elijah,  ''As  Jehovah,  the  God  of  Israel,  liveth, 
before  whom  I  stand."  Back  of  them  was  the 
great  God,  and  they  were  never,  never,  to  fear  the 
face  of  man. 


THE  SUPREME  APPEAL 


Pilot,  how  far  from  home? 

Not  far,  not  far  to-night, 

A  flight  of  spray,  a  sea-bird's  flight, 
A  flight  of  tossing  foam, 
And  then  the  hghts  of  home! 

And  yet  again,  how  far? 

And  seems  the  way  so  brief? 

Those  lights  beyond  the  roaring  reef 
Were  lights  of  moon  and  star, 
Far,  far,  none  knows  how  far! 

Pilot,  how  far  from  home? 
The  great  stars  pass  away 
Before  Him  as  a  flight  of  spray, 

Moons  as  a  flight  of  foam! 

I  see  the  lights  of  home. 

Alfred  Noyes 


II 

The  Supreme  Appeal 

Not  only  had  these  rugged  old  sons  of  the 
Spirit  the  consciousness  that  God  was  back  of 
them.  Their  splendid  virility  and  courage  were 
also  based  upon  their  conviction  of  an  unlimited 
future  before  them. 

It  has  been  noted  that  in  earlier  forms  the  Old 
Testament  was  divided  into  three  parts.  The 
first  was  called  the  Law,  the  second  the  Prophets, 
and  the  third  the  Other  Writings;  or,  to  put  it 
more  simply,  the  Writings.  This  threefold 
division  was  in  the  mind  of  Jesus  when  he  said  to 
his  disciples,  ''These  are  my  words  which  I  spake 
unto  you,  while  I  was  yet  with  you,  that  all 
things  must  needs  be  fulfilled,  which  are  written 
in  the  law  of  Moses,  and  the  prophets,  and  the 
psalms,  concerning  me."  Here  was  the  threefold 
grouping  of  the  early  Old  Testament.  The  first 
contained  what  we  commonly  call  the  Pentateuch. 
The  third  contained  the  poetical  writings,  and  the 
books  commonly  called  the  Chronicles.  But  the 
second  group,  the  Books  of  the  Prophets,  was 

21 


22  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

itself  divided  into  three  sections.  The  first  of 
these  was  called  the  Former  Prophets,  and  in- 
cluded Joshua,  Judges,  the  Books  of  Samuel, 
and  the  Books  of  the  Kings.  It  is  true  these  four 
books  were  historical,  but  they  were  history  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  prophets.  That  is,  they 
were  history  not  for  the  sake  of  narration  but  for 
the  sake  of  exhortation,  the  driving  home  of  great 
moral  lessons.  The  second  group  was  called  the 
Later  Prophets,  and  included  Isaiah,  Jeremiah, 
Ezekiel,  and,  later  on,  Daniel.  Then  there  was 
the  third  group  of  twelve  books,  from  Hosea  to 
Malachi,  called  the  Little  Prophets — as  we  say, 
the  Minor  Prophets — not,  it  may  be  noted,  from 
the  smallness  of  the  men,  but  from  the  brevity 
of  the  books. 

Now  it  will  be  observed  that,  in  the  first  group 
of  prophetic  writings,  prophecy  was  really  in  the 
form  of  history.  In  the  later  groups  it  was  in  the 
form  of  sermons.  The  reason  for  this  fact  may 
be  found  when  we  consider  that  in  the  earlier 
history  of  Israel  the  prophets  were  controlling 
the  course  of  events.  They  were  not  writing 
things.  They  were  doing  things.  It  was  not  the 
record  of  history,  but  the  enacting  of  history. 


THE  SUPREME  APPEAL  23 

that  concerned  them.  Moses  and  Samuel  were 
great  controllers  of  public  policies.  Nathan  and 
Elijah  and  Elisha  at  certain  times  in  their  careers 
were  almost  public  dictators.  They  shaped  and 
molded  the  events  of  their  time  as  Athanasius 
did,  as  John  Calvin  did,  as  John  Knox  did,  as 
John  Witherspoon  did. 

But  there  came  a  time  when  the  national  life 
swung  away  from  the  control  of  the  prophets  and 
when,  unable  longer  to  keep  the  nation  true  to 
God  and  to  duty,  these  men  began  to  write  down 
their  sermons.  It  is  said  that  Mr.  Gladstone,  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  met  a  crushing  defeat 
by  the  overthrow  of  a  reform  measure  for  which 
he  had  been  laboring.  When  it  seemed  as  if  his 
grip  had  gone,  when,  as  the  Irishman  expressed 
it,  his  "future  was  behind  him,"  the  grand  old 
man  reared  himself  in  the  midst  of  sneering, 
taunting,  exulting  foes,  his  eyes  flashing,  his 
voice  trumpet- toned,  and  thundered  out,  ''I 
appeal  to  time." 

So  with  these  old  prophets.  When  the  current 
went  against  them,  when  they  could  no  longer 
keep  Israel  true  to  the  pure  worship  of  Jehovah, 
they  appealed  to  time.     They  began  to  write 


24  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

down  their  sermons  for  the  future.  And  with 
Hosea  and  Amos  we  have  the  beginnings  of 
written  prophecy,  of  a  prophetic  writing  which 
consisted  not,  like  the  earher  hterature,  of  narra- 
tive concerning  a  prophet's  action,  but  rather 
of  messages — in  the  form  of  sermons — appeahng 
to  time,  confident  in  the  ultimate  triumph  of 
right.  In  a  word,  written  prophecy  in  the  form 
of  sermons  began  just  at  the  point  when  the 
messenger  first  felt  that  from  an  evil  present  he 
must  look  out  toward  a  better  future;  that  like 
blind  Milton  in  the  days  of  the  second  Charles, 
having  fallen  ''on  evil  days  .  .  .  and  evil 
tongues,  in  darkness,  and  with  dangers  compassed 
round,"  he  must  commit  to  writing  the  oracles  of 
God,  and  hand  down  to  the  generations  that 
were  to  follow  the  splendor  and  glory  of  his  own 
timeless  vision. 

So  the  prophet,  who  was  first  only  a  "forth- 
teller"  for  God,  became  a  "foreteller,"  a  seer,  a 
forward-looking  evangelist  of  a  kingdom  which 
was  yet  to  come.  It  has  been  a  commonplace  to 
point  out  that  prophecy  does  not  essentially  imply 
prediction.  This  is  only  half  of  the  truth.  The 
grim  inhibitions  of  the  present  forced  him  to 


THE  SUPREME  APPEAL  25 

reach  out  to  a  better  future.  At  first  this  future 
was  confined  to  the  present  fife.  But  gradually 
the  force  of  his  own  logic  and  the  burning  warmth 
of  his  instincts  swept  him  out  beyond  the  limits 
of  this  life.  He  began  to  see  that  the  coming 
Kingdom,  as  Kant  put  it,  ''sphered  out  into 
eternity."  The  doctrine  of  personal  immortality, 
at  first  a  mere  glimmer,  grows  brighter  and 
brighter  as  we  proceed,  because  the  prophets 
came  to  realize  that  their  appeal  to  future  time 
for  the  vindication  of  righteousness  and  punish- 
ment of  evil  was  in  reality  an  appeal  to  eternity. 
They  began  to  see  on  the  eastern  sky  line  of  the 
future  the  dawnings  of  the  glorious  day  when 
Jesus  would  bring  life  and  immortality  to  light 
in  his  gospel.  Confronted  by  an  evil  present  and 
by  certain  death,  they  felt  that  instinctive  scorn 
of  "victory  such  as  the  present  gives,"  which  is 
so  finely  expressed  by  Browning's  "Grammarian": 

Others  mistrust  and  say,  "But  time  escapes, 

Live  now  or  never!" 
He  said,  "What's  time?     Leave  Now  for  dogs  and  apes! 

Man  has  Forever." 

They  tell  us  of  Thomas  Carlyle  walking  one 
day   with   Bishop   Wilberforce,   and   of  how  he 


26  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

suddenly  stopped  and  said  with  great  earnestness, 
"Bishop,  have  you  a  creed?"  "Yes,  I  have,"  said 
the  bishop,  "and  I  beUeve  it  very  firmly.  Only 
one  thing  troubles  me."  "What  is  that?"  said 
Carlyle.  "The  slow  progress  that  my  creed 
seems  to  be  making  in  the  world,"  replied  the 
bishop.  "Ah!"  rejoined  the  great  Scotsman, 
"If  you  have  a  creed  you  can  afford  to  wait." 

"Happy  he  whose  inward  ear 
Angel  comfortings  can  hear 
O'er  the  rabble's  laughter; 
And,  while  Hatred's  fagots  burn, 
Glimpses  through  the  smoke  discern 
Of  the  good  hereafter." 


THE  SUPREME  FRATERNITY 


Have  the  elder  races  halted? 

Do  they  droop  and  end  their  lesson, 

wearied,  over  there  beyond  the  seas? 
We  take  up  the  task  eternal,  and  the 

burden,  and  the  lesson, 
Pioneers!    O  pioneers! 

All  the  past  we  leave  behind; 

We  debouch  upon  a  newer,  mightier 

world,  varied  world; 
Fresh  and  strong  the  world  we  seize, 

world  of  labor  and  the  march. 
Pioneers!    0  pioneers! 

We  detachments  steady  throwing, 
Down  the  edges,  through  the  passes, 

up  the  mountains  steep, 
Conquering,  holding,  daring,  venturing, 

as  we  go,  the  unknown  ways, 
Pioneers!    O  pioneers! 

We  primeval  forests  felling, 

We  the  rivers  stemming,  vexing  we, 

and  piercing  deep  the  mines  within; 
We  the  surface  broad  surveying,  we 

the  virgin  soil  upheaving. 
Pioneers!     0  pioneers! 

— Walt  Whitman 


Ill 

The  Supreme  Fraternity 

We  have  thus  far  noted  the  greatness  of  our 
heritage  received  from  men  who  did  their  work 
with  a  constant  sense  of  a  personal  and  powerful 
God  back  of  them  and  an  unlimited  future  before 
them.  There  is  now  a  third  general  remark  which 
should  be  made  concerning  them.  Living  in 
different  times  and  nations  and  circumstances, 
there  was  a  definite,  corporate  character  about 
the  whole  line  of  prophets.  They  belonged  to  a 
great  fraternity  that  had  a  common  creed  and  a 
common  language.  Their  sermons  were  intro- 
duced by  an  unvarying  formula.  Each  man  used 
the  writings  which  were  his  heritage  from  the 
older  members  of  the  fraternity.  Doctor  Moulton 
has  pointed  out  that  up  to  the  time  of  John  Milton 
the  highest  mark  of  literary  merit  was  not  orig- 
inality, but  the  skillful  use  of  the  material  handed 
down  by  other  writers.  All  modern  notions  of 
plagiarism  are  strictly  post-Miltonic,  as  every 
reader  of  Elizabethan  literature  will  abundantly 

29 


30  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

testify.  So  these  old  prophets  freely  and  naively 
used  the  writings  of  those  who  had  gone  before. 
There  was  even  a  common  method  of  speech  and 
a  dramatic  similarity  in  the  illustration  and 
enforcement  of  truth.  Study  four  wonderful 
preachers  like  Amos,  Hosea,  Micah,  and  Isaiah, 
and  you  find  in  them  the  widest  possible  varia- 
tions. Country  preachers  and  city  preachers; 
polished  masters  of  rhetoric  and  crude,  wild, 
exhorters;  urbane  men  of  affairs  and  boorish 
peasants;  varying  temperamentally — one  leaning 
toward  pessimism,  another  toward  optimism; 
one  stern,  another  tender;  one  logical,  another 
emotional;  but  in  spite  of  these  differences  they 
are  a  blood  brotherhood,  standing  on  the  ground 
of  the  same  divine  covenant,  holding  the  same 
creed,  appealing  to  the  same  motives,  laboring 
for  the  same  objectives;  and  though  generations 
of  time  separated  their  activities,  yet  the  work 
of  one  became  the  heritage  of  another,  and 
through  the  whole  line  we  feel  the  thrill  of  a 
glorious,  spiritual  fraternity.  That  fraternity 
was  the  herald  of  the  democracy  and  brotherhood 
of  to-day,  and  its  voice  is  still  pleading,  trumpet- 
tongued,  against  everything  that  is  small  and 


THE  SUPREME  FRATERNITY 


mean  and  base,  and  for  everything  that  is  big 
and  true  and  fine  in  modern  fife. 

In  these  days  when,  possibly  by  his  own  fault, 
more  probably  by  the  faulty  conditions  of  modern 
life,  the  prophet  is  set  down  in  some  minds  as  an 
amiable  but  nonessential  supernumerary,  a  genial 
parasite,  an  ornamental  adjunct  to  life,  a  "drinker 
of  tea  and  a  ringer  of  door-bells,''  it  means  much 
to  him  to  get  back  to  the  virile  picture  of  his 
forbears,  interpreters  of  God,  not  fearing  the 
face  of  man,  knights  errant  of  life's  highest 
romance — keeping  the  soul  of  the  world  alive. 

There  is  much  that  narrows  and  belittles  the 
preacher's  point  of  view  in  these  days.  Some- 
times he  feels  shut  up  to  a  life  of  puttering. 
Sometimes  he  is  the  victim  of  disillusion  in  that 
middle-age  reaction  which  often  follows  upon 
the  idealisms  of  youth.  ''What  a  genius  I  was 
when  I  wrote  that  book!"  cried  Swift  when  he 
looked  upon  a  work  of  his  early  manhood.  Millais, 
in  the  presence  of  a  collection  of  pictures  which 
he  had  painted  in  the  splendid  glow  of  his  early 
youth,  burst  into  tears  and  fled  from  the  room. 
Sometimes,  too,  the  spiritual  guides  of  men  be- 
come saddened  and   disillusioned  as  they  look 


32  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

back  on  the  splendid  ideals  of  youth  and  then 
realize  the  poor  and  bare  and  futile  fulfillments 
of  middle  age. 

How  it  braces  us  to  gaze  across  the  generations, 
stretching  like  mountain  peak  beyond  mountain 
peak,  and  catch  the  ringing  echoes  that  come 
from  the  lips  of  the  spiritual  watchmen  and 
warders  of  the  centuries,  to  feel  ourselves  a  part, 
if  ever  so  little  a  part,  of  the  splendid  fraternity 
of  men  who  in  every  age  and  time  have  stood 
forth  to  speak  for  men  to  God  and  for  God  to 
men!  The  late  Sylvester  Home,  whose  early, 
lamented  death  has  left  an  unfillable  vacancy  in 
the  ranks  of  the  fraternity,  has  given  to  his 
brothers  a  final  message  in  those  burning  words 
of  his  on  ''The  Romance  of  Preaching":  ''Who 
should  be  proud  of  their  calling  if  not  we?  What 
other  history  has  ever  equaled  ours?  Think  of 
the  procession  of  the  preachers!  No  range  of 
mountains  has  ever  been  high  enough  to  stay 
their  progress;  no  river  deep  and  broad  enough  to 
daunt  them;  no  forests  dark  and  dense  enough  to 
withstand  their  advance.  No  poet  has  ever  sung 
the  epic  of  their  sacrifices.  Was  ever  such  a 
romance?     Was  ever  love  exalted  to  so  pure  a 


THE  SUPREME  FRATERNITY  33 

passion?  Was  ever  in  the  human  soul  so  un- 
quenchable a  fire?  Silver  and  gold  they  had  none. 
They  did  not  seek  to  win  mankind  by  materialistic 
gifts.  Such  as  they  had  they  gave.  The  alms 
they  distributed  were  faith,  hope,  love.  Wherever 
they  went  they  trod  a  pilgrim  road  and  flung 
forth  their  faith,  often  to  a  skeptical  and  scornful 
generation.  But  what  heeded  they?  They 
passed  onward  from  frontier  to  frontier,  the 
legion  that  never  was  counted,  and,  let  us  add, 
that  never  knew  defeat. 

"Gradually,  before  their  message,  ancient  pagan 
empires  tottered,  heathen  despots  bowed  the 
head,  in  the  lands  of  Goth  and  Vandal  stately 
cathedrals  reared  their  splendid  towers  and  spires, 
and  the  battle  music  of  the  Christian  crusades 
rang  triumphantly  in  chiming  bells  and  pealing 
organs  over  conquered  races.  In  the  recesses  of 
Indian  forests,  up  the  dark  rivers  of  Africa  and 
South  America  that  often  flowed  red,  along  the 
frozen  coasts  of  Greenland  and  Labrador,  the 
pioneer  preachers  made  their  pilgrimage.  Let 
every  village  preacher  who  climbs  into  a  rude 
rostrum  to  give  out  a  text  and  preach  a  sermon 
to  a  meager  handful  of  somewhat  stolid  hearers. 


34  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

remember  to  what  majestic  Fraternity  he  be- 
longs, and  what  romantic  traditions  he  inherits. 
He,  too,  is  the  servant  of  the  Spirit." 

Yes,  we  are  comrades  in  the  fellowship  of  the 
Spirit  with  the  great  souls  whose  words  and  works 
are  the  hinges  upon  which  the  doors  of  history 
have  turned.  The  fellowship  of  Paul,  the  swarthy 
little  Christian  Jew  whose  work-gnarled  hand 
shook  the  world;  of  Athanasius,  the  "manikin" 
giant,  the  dwarflike,  godlike  defender  of  the  faith, 
with  his  piercing  intellect  and  his  glowing  heart; 
of  Chrysostom,  the  golden-mouthed  orator,  whose 
mellow  tones  vibrated  in  the  hearts  of  men  until 
they  roused  an  answering  note  from  the  deepest 
chords  of  their  nobler  natures;  of  old  John  Calvin, 
thundering  God's  sovereignty  and  human  democ- 
racy and  church  union  at  Geneva;  of  John  Knox 
as  he  confronted  Queen  Mary  or  pounded  the 
pulpit  at  Saint  Giles,  fearing  neither  the  face  of 
the  "pleasing  gentlewoman"  nor  the  face  of  a 
mob;  of  Luther  at  Worms;  of  John  Wesley  as 
his  brother  Charles  described  him,  coming  out  of 
a  riot  "looking  like  a  good  soldier  of  Jesus,  his 
clothes  all  torn  and  bloody" ;  of  John  Witherspoon, 
steadying  and  upholding  his  timid  fellow  country- 


THE  SUPREME  FRATERNITY  35 

men  through  the  revolutionary  crisis;  of  Henry 
Ward  Beecher  at  Birmingham  and  Manchester 
and  Liverpool,  swinging  the  decisive  opinion  of 
Great  Britain's  middle  class  to  the  American 
Union  at  the  darkest  crisis  hour  of  human  destiny 
in  the  new  world ;  yes,  if  you  please,  the  fellowship 
of  the  spirit  with  men  like  Cardinal  Mercier,  the 
one  voice  in  Belgium  which  the  hand  of  the 
oppressor  could  not  silence;  of  all  these  we  are 
the  heirs  and  the  blood  brothers.  Comrades  of 
the  Christian  ministry,  dare  we  be  small  or 
cowardly  with  these  at  our  back? 


'  Was  it  for  mere  fools-play,  make-believe  and  mumming, 
So  we  battled  it  like  men,  not  boylike  sulked  or  whined? 
Each  of  us  heard  clang  God's  'Come!'  and  each  was  coming: 
Soldiers  all,  to  forward-face,  not  sneaks  to  lag  behind! 

'How  of  the  field's  fortune?    That  concerned  our  Leader! 
Led,  we  struck  our  stroke,  nor  cared  for  doings  left  and  right; 
Each  as  on  his  sole  head,  failer  or  succeeder, 
Lay  the  blame  or  lit  the  praise;  no  care  for  cowards: 
fight!" 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  LABOR 


The  longer  on  this  earth  we  live 

And  weigh  the  various  qualities  of  men, 

Seeing  how  most  are  fugitive, 

Or  fitful  gifts,  at  best,  of  now  and  then. 

Wind-wavered  corpse-lights,  daughters  of  the  fen. 

The  more  we  feel  the  high  stern-featured  beauty 

Of  plain  devotedness  to  duty. 

Steadfast  and  still,  nor  paid  with  mortal  praise, 

But  finding  amplest  recompense 

For  life's  ungarlanded  expense 

In  work  done  squarely  and  unwasted  days. 

— James  Russell  Lowell 


IV 

The  Gospel  of  Labor 

The  modern  minister  needs  all  the  breadth  and 
vigor  and  healthy  mindedness,  all  the  insistence 
on  the  practical  application  of  means  to  ends, 
all  the  spirit  of  give  and  take,  the  grim  deter- 
mination to  play  out  the  game,  the  shutting  of 
the  teeth  to  do  the  thing  accounted  impossible 
or  to  perish  in  the  effort,  the  shrewd  admixture 
of  courage  and  caution,  that  make  the  captain 
of  industry  or  the  successful  general.  The  day 
has  gone  by  when  piety  can  cloak  laziness,  when 
spirituality  may  camouflage  slack  and  shuffling 
and  flabby  inefficiency.  During  the  Civil  War  a 
certain  company  became  known  as  the  ''Lazy 
Squad,"  and  had  earned  its  name.  In  desperation 
their  captain,  endeavoring  to  shame  his  men, 
offered  a  two  days'  furlough  for  rest  to  all  who 
would  volunteer.  It  is  said  that  fifty-nine  men 
of  the  sixty  accepted  the  offer  by  stepping  for- 
ward two  paces.  When  the  captain  asked  the 
sixtieth  man  why  he  too  had  not  volunteered,  the 

39 


40  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

calm  patriot  replied,  ''I  am  too  lazy."  The 
man  who  is  almost  too  lazy  to  be  lazy  is  being 
eliminated  in  Christian  service  as  everywhere 
else.  He  who  enters  the  ministry  for  a  rest  cure 
is  first  in  need  of  a  mental  cure. 

There  has  been  much  modern  thinking  in  the 
direction  of  what  the  philosophers  call  prag- 
matism. I  am  not  really  sure  that  anyone,  in- 
cluding the  pragmatists,  knows  exactly  what  it  is. 
It  seems  to  mean  that  whatever  works  well  is, 
for  that  reason,  true.  It  is  true  for  you  if  it 
works  well  for  you,  and  false  for  me  if  it  works 
ill  for  me.  True  to-day  if  its  practical  outworkings 
are  favorable,  false  to-morrow  if  the  practical 
effects  are  disastrous.  My  own  difficulty  has 
been  in  assuming  a  standard  by  which  I  may 
judge  whether  a  thing  has  worked  favorably  or 
not.  I  can  understand  how  the  practical  out- 
workings of  a  belief  will  test  its  truth,  but  not  so 
clearly  how  the  practical  outworkings  of  it  are 
the  basis  of  truth.  For  unless  I  have  some  basis 
or  standard  by  which  to  judge  I  cannot  determine 
how  it  works.  I  am  left  like  Archimedes,  without 
a  fulcrum  for  the  lever.  I  am  in  a  state  of  un- 
certainty as  hopeless  as  that  of  the  sweet  high- 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  LABOR  41 

school  graduate  who  wrote  the  essay,  tied  up  in 
pink  ribbon,  on  the  topic  "Whither  are  we  drift- 
ing, and  if  so  to  what  extent?'' 

But  that  is  neither  here  nor  there.  There  is 
much  in  pragmatism  which  is  true  but  not  new, 
as  there  is  possibly  something  which  is  new  but 
not  true.  In  the  sense  that  life  itself  is  greater 
than  logic  and  subjects  our  theories  to  practical 
tests  on  which  in  the  end  our  belief  in  their  truth 
relies:  in  this  sense  we  are  all  pragmatists.  For 
two  thousand  years  ago  it  was  said,  "Not  every 
one  that  saith  unto  me,  Lord,  Lord,  shall  enter 
into  the  kingdom  of  heaven;  but  he  that  doeth 
the  will  of  my  Father  who  is  in  heaven."  And 
again  it  was  said,  "By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know 
them." 

But  this  tendency  of  human  thinking  is  a 
faithful  reflection  of  the  temper  of  our  times. 
We  live  in  an  age  which  is  intensely,  intolerantly 
practical.  It  demands  to  see  the  truth  at  work. 
The  modern  man  flings  out  his  challenge:  "If 
you  have  the  doctrine  let  us  see  what  it  can  do." 
To  the  boast  of  a  Glendower,  "I  can  call  spirits 
from  the  vasty  deep,"  he  replies  with  the  skep- 
ticism of  a  Hotspur,  "Why,  so  can  I,  or  so  can 


42  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

any  man;  but  will  they  come  when  you  do  call 
for  them?''  Is  the  truth  we  proclaim  bringing 
the  results?  As  the  old  revolutionary  patriot  put 
it,  ''Will  the  Constitution  march?" 

And  this  means  work.  "Know  thy  work/' 
said  Carlyle,  "and  work  at  it  like  a  very  Hercules. 
One  monster  there  is  in  all  this  world,  an  idle 
man."  This  will  leave  little  time  or  room  for 
fuss  and  flummery  and  affectation  and  ecclesiastical 
millinery.  There  was  a  great  gospel  preacher  in 
days  of  old  whose  personality  was  so  overpower- 
ing that  when  a  man  met  him  he  fell  down  at  his 
feet  to  do  him  reverence.  But  this  preacher  said: 
"Stand  up.  I  myself  also  am  a  man."  This  is 
our  watchword.  "I  myself  also  am  a  man."  The 
preacher  is  only  a  man.  He  must  learn  to  think, 
not  of  the  claims  of  the  cloth,  but  of  its  obligations. 
The  average  preacher  is  perhaps  not  embar- 
rassed with  undue  reverence  in  this  age;  but  for 
all  that  there  is  a  subtle  danger  that  we  should 
allow  the  responsibility  of  the  shepherd  to  be 
displaced  by  the  exactions  of  the  official.  Lowell 
once  said  that  "The  minister  must  constantly 
be  on  his  guard  against  the  emphasis  on  the 
perquisites    and     prerogatives     of    his    office." 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  LABOR  43 

Mightier  than  Lowell  was  One  who  said,  "He 
that  is  great  among  you,  let  him  be  your  minister." 
There  is  always  this  official  temptation  lurking 
in  the  pulpit,  with  its  dangerous  development  of 
dogmatism  in  those  who  talk  without  anyone  to 
talk  back.  This  tendency,  if  not  inhibited,  brings 
the  preacher  at  last  to  that  "Sir  Oracle"  attitude 
of  the  Lord  Chancellor  in  the  play: 

"The  Law  is  the  true  embodiment 
Of  everything  that's  excellent. 
It  has  no  kind  of  fault  or  flaw, 

And  I,  my  lords,  embody  the  Law." 

To  this  end  a  heaven-born  but  humanly  culti- 
vated sense  of  humor  is  one  of  the  most  essential 
aids  toward  a  true  proportion.  It  helps  us,  while 
we  take  our  tasks  seriously,  so  that  we  should 
not  take  ourselves  too  seriously.  We  must  also 
remember  that,  while  truth  is  objective  and 
authoritative,  it  is  organic  and  vital  rather  than 
mechanical  and  mathematical.  It  is  to  be  driven 
home  to  men,  not  by  hard  dogmatism,  but  by 
warm,  persuasive  appeal  to  the  inner  experience 
of  the  hearer  on  the  plane  of  equality  and  in  an 
atmosphere  of  brotherhood.  There  is  no  better 
introduction  to  the  heart  of  the  average  man  in 


44  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

the  pew  than  the  quite  simple  expedient  of 
remaining  human  in  the  pulpit.  It  is  said  that 
the  mother  of  George  the  Third  used  to  nag  him 
constantly  with  the  admonition,  "George,  be  a 
king."  It  ought  to  be  dinned  into  the  ear  of  every 
preacher,  present  or  prospective,  "My  son,  be 
a  man." 

And  this  means  not  only  to  keep  within  one's 
limitations,  but  to  measure  up  to  his  obhgations. 
He  is  only  a  man,  but  he  must  be  all  of  a  man. 
If  he  is  not  to  overreach,  still  less  is  he  to  fall 
short.  No  man  living  should  have  greater  care 
in  cultivating  a  fine  scorn  of  all  that  is  belittling 
or  puerile  or  sordid.  Not  yet  extinct  is  the  brood 
of  false  prophets  who  called  forth  from  Milton 
the  blistering  indictment  in  "Lycidas"  of 
those  who 

For  their  bellies'  sake, 
Creep,  and  intrude,  and  climb  into  the  fold! 
Of  other  care  they  little  reckoning  make 
Than  how  to  scramble  at  the  shearer's  feast. 
And  shove  away  the  worthy  bidden  guest. 
Blind  mouths!  that  scarce  themselves  know  how  to  hold 
A  sheep-hook,  or  have  learnt  aught  else  the  least 
That  to  the  faithful  herdsman's  art  belongs! 

The  mercenary  and  puttering  minister;  the 
stock-selling,   promoting   minister;   the   minister 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  LABOR  45 

who  ''crooks  the  pregnant  hinges  of  the  knee 
where  thrift  may  follow  fawning"  is  on  the  whole 
the  most  abject  caricature  of  manhood  which 
ever  cumbered  God's  green  earth.  I  pray  you, 
avoid  him  altogether. 

All  this  means  to  know  the  manhood  of  hard, 
unrelenting  labor.  George  William  Curtis  once 
wrote,  *'An  engine  of  one  cat  power  running  all 
the  time  is  more  effective  than  one  of  forty  horse 
power  standing  still."  This  reminder  is  pecuHarly 
needful  for  the  minister,  because  of  all  men  it  is 
easy  for  him  to  lie  down  on  his  task.  He  has 
no  taskmaster  but  his  own  conscience  and  a 
certain  fearful  looking-for  of  the  ''deadline." 
But  he  must  not  only  be  in  constant  touch  with 
the  practical  lives  of  men,  he  must  also  be  a 
reader  and  digester  of  the  great  books.  The  best 
preacher  and  the  best  new  book  are  to  be  wedded 
together  until  death  do  them  part.  And  some  of 
the  best  new  books  are  several  hundred  years  old. 

There  is,  moreover,  really  no  way  of  reading 
books  except  to  read  them.  Notebooks,  scrap- 
books,  clippings,  filing  cabinets,  and  the  like 
are  good  servants  but  bad  masters.  An  eminent 
writer  in   the   British  Weekly  indicates  an  evil 


46  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

all  too  common  on  this  side  the  Atlantic,  namely, 
a  "fat  envelope  bulging  with  clippings,  while 
the  owner  is  intellectually  poor  and  lean."  There 
is  such  a  thing  as  too  much  routine  and  too  little 
assimilation.  'It  is  more  important  to  fill  the 
head  and  the  heart  than  to  fill  the  filing  cabinet.'' 
The  story  that  goes  home  is  never  taken  out  of  a 
handy  encyclopedia  of  illustrations.  May  the 
curse  of  the  master  of  all  good  homiletics  rest 
upon  the  day  in  which  these  evil  devices  were 
first  brought  into  being.  The  effective  illustration 
must  first  ''soak  in,''  become  part  of  ourselves, 
and  then  flow  out  "as  effortless  as  woodland  nooks 
send  violets  up  and  paint  them  blue." 

Above  all  must  the  preacher  be  steeped  and 
soaked  and  saturated  in  the  Bible.  For  him 
Walter  Scott  was  right.  In  the  sense  of  utter 
preeminence  and  with  no  real  second,  "There 
is  but  one  book."  Still  is  it  true  as  the  couplet 
ran  in  days  of  old: 

"These  hath  God  married, 
No  man  can  part; 
Dust  on  the  Bible, 
Drought  in  the  heart." 


THE  RANGE  FINDERS 


I  know  of  a  land  that  knows  a  Lord 

That  is  neither  brave  nor  true; 

And  I  know  of  a  sword,  a  sword,  a  sword, 

That  can  cut  a  chain  in  two, 

Its  edge  is  keen,  its  blade  is  broad; 

I  know  of  a  sword,  a  sword,  a  sword, 

That  can  cut  a  chain  in  two. 

I  know  of  a  land  that  is  sunk  in  shame, 

Where  true  hearts  faint  and  tire; 

And  I  know  of  a  name,  a  name,  a  name. 

That  can  set  the  land  on  fire, 

Its  sound  is  a  brand,  its  letters  flame; 

I  know  of  a  name,  a  name,  a  name, 

That  can  set  the  land  on  fire. 

I  know  of  hearts  that  hate  the  wrong, 

Of  souls  that  are  brave  and  true; 

And  I  know  of  a  song,  a  song,  a  song. 

That  can  break  their  fetters  through. 

Oh  you  who  long  and  long  and  long, 

I  will  give  you  the  song,  the  song,  the  song, 

That  can  break  your  fetters  through. 

— From  the  Songs  of  the  Sons  of  Jaffir, 
translated  from  the  Persian 


The  Range  Finders 

Despite  wails  to  the  contrary,  I  am  persuaded 
that  never  in  the  history  of  the  Christian  Church 
did  the  preacher  have  as  wide  an  opportunity  for 
public  leadership  as  now.  Every  man  acquainted 
with  the  inner  facts  knows  how  the  Great  War 
drives  came  back  to  the  Church  for  their  motive 
power  in  terms  of  men  and  money.  There  have 
been  attempts  to  make  it  appear  that  ministerial 
leadership  was  negligible  in  the  great  crisis.  Such 
attempts  must  be  either  ignorant  or  insincere. 
Without  ministerial  leadership  the  war  work  of 
the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  would  have  been  impossible. 
In  large  population  centers  preachers  stood  out  as 
the  leaders  around  whom  was  crystallized  most  of 
our  patriotic  and  philanthropic  service.  When  one 
thinks  of  Jowett  and  Fosdick  and  Cadman  and 
Hillis  in  Greater  New  York,  of  President  King 
and  McAfee  in  France,  of  Stone  in  Chicago, 
of  Boyd  in  Portland,  of  Matthews  in  Seattle,  of 
Freeman  in  Pasadena,  of  Francis  in  Los  Angeles, 

49 


50  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

of  Alexander  in  Pittsburgh,  of  Wood  in  Wash- 
ington, and  many,  many  more  of  equal  rank,  he 
is  dealing  with  personalities  around  whom,  more 
than  any  single  layman  that  could  be  named,  the 
patriotic  idealism  of  their  respective  communities 
crystallized.  The  tasks  of  peace  and  reconstruc- 
tion also  have  the  supreme  places  for  the  preacher 
who  can  fill  them.  The  armor  is  hanging  ready 
for  the  man  who  can  put  it  on.  The  sword  of 
Ulysses  awaits  its  wielder.  The  battles  of  peace 
and  reconstruction  are  in  some  respects  more 
complex  and  even  more  discouraging  than  were 
those  physical  combats  fought  out  on  the  sodden 
fields  of  Flanders.  Without  the  preacher  there 
would  be  no  hope.  Where  no  vision  is,  the  people 
perish.  And  where  there  is  no  prophet  the  vision 
will  perish. 

In  the  Great  War  the  airmen  became  the  eyes 
of  the  army.  The  observer,  ten  thousand  feet 
in  the  air,  had  a  range  of  vision  utterly  impossible 
to  the  man  in  the  trenches.  He  saw  many  miles 
behind  the  line  and  many  miles  in  front  of  the 
line.  He  was  able  to  signal  to  the  man  on  the 
ground  the  effect  of  his  shots,  the  alignment  of 
the    enemy's   forces,    the    location    of    his    own 


THE  RANGE  FINDERS  51 

reserves.  The  prophet  is  in  like  manner  the 
airman,  the  range  finder,  of  civiUzation's  great 
battle.  He  looks  backward  through  history,  and 
in  the  light  of  that  vision  peers  onward  in 
prophecy;  he  sees  the  sweep  of  events,  the  broad 
outlines  of  the  battle,  as  the  man  on  the  street 
can  never  see  them.  In  the  great  moral  issues  that 
call  for  world-wide  and  time-long  statesmanship, 
it  is  the  preacher,  with  his  sweep  of  history  and 
prophecy,  who  should  have  the  range;  while  the 
layman,  too  often  dealing  only  in  the  light  of  his 
own  times,  is  able  to  see  but  httle  behind  him 
or  ahead  of  him.  It  is  the  business  of  the  prophet 
to  give  the  range  to  the  practical  man  in  the 
trenches.  He  will  often  find  this  a  difficult  task. 
The  man  on  the  ground  will  distrust  him.  The 
sky  pilot,  he  complains,  is  not  sufficiently  ac- 
quainted with  the  making  of  trenches;  he  does 
not  keep  his  feet  on  the  earth;  he  is  ''up  in  the 
air";  he  is  an  impractical  "dreamer  of  dreams, 
who  dreams  that  he  is  dreaming."  Our  task  of 
giving  the  range  to  the  man  on  the  ground  is  all 
the  more  difficult  because  some  ministerial 
airmen  have  not  appreciated  the  full  meaning  of 
their  mission,   have   underrated    the    ''prize   of 


52  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

the  high  calling  of  God  in  Christ,"  have  not 
trained  themselves  to  see  fearlessly  and  clearly, 
have  indulged  in  spectacular  looping  of  the  loop 
and  other  sensational  stunts,  have  "played  such 
tricks  before  high  heaven  as  make  the  angels 
weep."  But  this  must  not  deter  the  honest  air- 
man from  his  task.  He  is  the  eyes  of  the  advanc- 
ing army  of  civilization,  and  while  he  is  not  to 
plume  himself  upon  his  elevation  nor  to  feel  for 
one  moment  superior  to  the  man  whose  duty  is 
the  service  of  the  trenches:  yet  he  is,  with  clear 
courage  and  incorruptible  fidelity,  to  report  his 
observations  to  the  great  army  of  laymen  who 
must  depend  upon  him  for  the  long  ranges  of 
life  and  thought. 

Every  thinking  idealist  to-day  has  come  to  feel 
that  another  world  war  means  the  end  of  civih- 
zation,  and  that  the  only  alternative  is  an  or- 
ganized world.  Some  alignment  of  civihzed 
peoples  for  the  prevention  of  war  is  at  hand.  It 
is  the  ideal  for  which  the  Church  has  prayed  and 
dreamed  through  two  thousand  years,  the  pas- 
sionate dream  of  her  Lord.  Was  there  ever  such 
an  opportunity  for  the  Christian  minister  who 
lives  "above  the  fog  in  public  duty  and  in  private 


THE  RANGE  FINDERS  53 

thinking"  to  lead  the  world  toward  the  better 
day?  It  will  take  courage,  for  partisanship  will 
growl  and  snarl ;  musty  traditionalism  will  shrink 
and  tremble;  narrow  selfishness,  which  must 
either  explain  away,  apologize  for,  or  stultify 
Jesus  of  Nazareth,  will  thunder  against  him. 
But  let  the  preacher,  valiant  and  undaunted, 
give  forth  his  message  as  did  our  "peers,  the 
heroes  of  old."  We  must  bring  the  Church  to 
her  true  position  of  world  leadership  in  the  tasks 
of  peace;  she  must  never  again  by  her  praise  and 
prayers  drown  the  wail  of  the  widow  and  the 
orphan.  She  must  never  again  be  indifferent  to 
the  rights  and  the  wrongs  of  labor.  She  must  do 
exact  and  equal  justice  between  the  rich  lords  of 
the  land  and  the  poor  lords  only  of  their  hands. 
She  must  hold  steadily  the  brotherhood  and 
democracy  of  Christ  over  against  the  hideous 
red  menace  of  Bolshevism.  Nor  must  she  forget 
the  cruel  conditions  which  have  sometimes  stim- 
ulated this  menace.  She  must  have  eyes  to  see 
if,  as  Ruskin  has  said,  ''under  her  very  sanctuary 
windows  she  may  behold  the  grass  beat  level  by 
the  drift  of  human  blood."  She  must  by  her 
service    to    the    community   show    the    modern 


54  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

priests  of  Baal  that  the  Lord  God  of  Elijah  lives 
and  reigns.  As  Spurgeon  once  said,  "The  God 
that  answereth  by  orphanages,  let  him  be  God." 

There  is  a  story  of  a  certain  piazza  at  Rome 
where  stands  the  statue  of  the  old  emperor, 
Marcus  Aurelius.  It  comes  from  the  hand  of  an 
unknown  sculptor,  is  of  very  early  date,  but  a 
most  impressive  work  of  art.  When  the  great 
Michelangelo  first  came  to  gaze  upon  that  life- 
like figure,  every  line  of  the  horse  and  the  man  be- 
speaking action,  energy  incarnate,  the  artist, 
enraptured,  cried  out:  "Camina!  Camina!'' 
(Go  on  then!  Go  on  then!) 

The  Church  of  Jesus  Christ  has  the  equipment 
and  the  resources  and  the  message  and  the  men. 
In  her  hand  is  the  only  power  that  can  win  in  the 
struggle  for  a  better  world.  It  is  hers  yet  to  hide, 
by  the  crown  of  universal  empire,  the  scar  marks 
of  the  crown  of  thorns.  Brethren  of  the  holy 
ministry,  look  at  her  powers  and  her  possibilities, 
and  let  us  cry  to  her:  ''Go  on  then!  Go  on  then!" 
And  by  God's  good  grace  let  us  lead  her  on,  a 
mighty  army,  ready  for  the  struggle,  and 
supremely  confident  of  victory. 


THE  INNER  CHAMBER 


Let  no  man  think  that  sudden  in  a  minute 

All  is  accomplished  and  the  work  is  done; 

Though  with  thine  earliest  dawn  thou  shouldst  begin  it 

Scarce  were  it  ended  in  thy  setting  sun. 

Oh  the  regret,  the  struggle  and  the  failing! 
Oh  the  days  desolate  and  useless  years! 
Vows  in  the  night,  so  fierce  and  unavailing! 
Stings  of  my  shame  and  passion  of  my  tears! 

How  have  I  seen  in  Araby  Orion, 
Seen  without  seeing,  till  he  set  again, 
Known  the  night-noise  and  thunder  of  the  lion, 
Silence  and  sounds  of  the  prodigious  plain! 

How  have  I  knelt  with  arms  of  my  aspiring 
Lifted  all  night  in  irresponsive  air, 
Dazed  and  amazed  with  overmuch  desiring, 
Blank  with  the  utter  agony  of  prayer! 

Shame  on  the  flame  so  dying  to  an  ember! 
Shame  on  the  reed  so  lightly  overset ! 
Yes,  I  have  seen  him,  can  I  not  remember? 
Yes,  I  have  known  him,  and  shall  Paul  forget? 

— Frederic  W.  H.  Myers 


VI 
The  Inner  Chamber 

I  have  thus  far  been  urging  the  qualities  of 
decision  and  resolution,  of  clear,  practical  action, 
of  broad  vision  and  courage  and  hard  work.  I 
now  turn  to  the  inner  life  of  the  preacher.  Refer- 
ence has  already  been  made  to  the  necessity  of 
Bible  study.  There  will  be  no  misunderstanding, 
I  am  sure,  in  indicating  something  even  deeper 
and  more  vital.  It  has  been  pointed  out  that 
when  Jesus  met  his  first  great  temptation  in  the 
wilderness  he  fell  back  upon  the  written  word  of 
God,  and  conquered.  But  when  he  faced  his 
second  great  temptation,  after  the  feeding  of  the 
five  thousand,  he  had  learned  the  divine  art  of 
listening  to  his  Father,  so  that  he  no  longer 
needed  to  fall  back  upon  the  Scriptures,  but  went 
to  God  direct,  and,  face  to  face  with  him  in 
the  night  on  the  mountain  side,  wrestling  in 
prayer,  came  away  a  victor.  And  when  the  third 
great  temptation  assailed  him  in  Passion  Week, 
when  Greece  was  beckoning  to  him  with  her  rosy 


58  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

fingers — Greece,  with  her  art  and  literature  and 
poetry,  showing  to  him  a  pathway  of  hght, 
wreathed  in  flowers,  bidding  him  turn  away  from 
the  hard  and  ugly  cross — mark  you,  in  that  ex- 
treme moment  of  temptation,  so  accustomed  was 
he  to  direct  fellowship  with  God  that  he  no 
longer  needed  even  to  go  to  God,  for  God  came 
to  him.  At  the  first  cry,  ''Save  me  from  this 
hour  .  .  .  glorify  thy  name,"  came  the  divine 
response,  ''I  have  both  glorified  it,  and  will 
glorify  it  again." 

We  need  our  daily  periods  of  study  of  the  Word 
of  God,  but  we  need  something  more.  We  must 
learn  to  go  to  him  and  talk  face  to  face,  as  a  man 
talketh  with  a  friend.  And  having  learned  the 
art  of  listening  to  him,  having  the  habit  of  fellow- 
ship, then  in  our  times  of  greatest  need  and  stress 
the  moment  we  consciously  reach  out  to  him, 
lo,  we  find  him  by  our  side  to  help  us.  The  inner 
life  of  every  great  preacher  has  been  the  fountain- 
head  of  his  power.  "They  looked  unto  him  and 
were  radiant."  There  was  a  preacher  of  old  con- 
cerning whom  a  discerning  woman  said,  "Behold, 
now  I  perceive  that  this  is  a  holy  man  of  God, 
that  passe th  by  us  continually."    What  a  tribute 


THE  INNER  CHAMBER  59 

to  the  preacher!  Akin  to  it  was  the  wholly  in- 
nocent remark  of  a  little  girl  who  went  to  the 
front  door  and  found  Phillips  Brooks  standing 
there.  Going  back  to  her  mother  she  said  she 
did  not  know  who  the  stranger  was,  but  thought 
he  must  be  Jesus. 

And  this  does  not  mean  sanctimoniousness,  but 
sanctity;  not  cant,  but  a  splendid  radiance  out 
of  an  overflowing,  spiritual  life  within.  With  the 
rapidly  swinging  pendulum  of  human  thought, 
which  always  describes  the  entire  arc  from  extreme 
to  extreme,  the  time  is  coming,  if  it  is  not  already 
here,  when  the  social  and  practical  and  admin- 
istrative side  of  ministerial  service  may  grow  out  of 
all  proportion  to  the  inner  sources  of  it.  We  are 
already  in  danger  of  undue  emphasis  on  social 
qualities,  on  ability  as  a  mixer,  on  genius  for 
organization,  rather  than  on  the  djmamic  of  a 
life  daily  in  touch  with  God.  Many  a  man  to-day 
is  too  much  of  a  promoter  to  be  a  prophet.  And 
we  dare  not  forget  that  Jesus,  with  a  choice  of 
the  outer  and  inner  ministry,  deliberately  chose 
the  latter.  In  the  busiest  crisis  he  systematically 
withdrew  himself  for  fellowship  with  his  Father. 
'Tor  their  sakes   I  sanctify  myself."     I   quote 


60  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

from  an  editorial  published  a  few  years  ago  in 
The  Century:  "The  minister  has  to  study,  and 
to  pray;  he  has  to  lead  the  worship  of  his 
people;  he  has  to  preach;  he  has  to  go  about  on 
errands  of  mercy  to  the  sick  and  sorrowful  and 
sinful;  in  the  midst  of  a  generation  occupied  with 
things  material  he  has  to  uphold  ideals  and  repre- 
sent the  essential  merits  of  religion.  There  are 
plenty  of  people  to  study  sociology,  and  to 
organize  philanthropy;  the  minister  specially 
demands  all  his  time  and  thought  if  he  is  to  save 
our  souls  by  building  up  character  that  shall  be 
buttressed  in  principle : 

*For  he  that  feeds  man  serveth  few; 
He  serveth  all  who  dares  be  true.'" 

Moreover,  an  inner  life  of  prayer  and  fellowship 
with  God  is  a  minister's  sole  guaranty  against  the 
most  tragic  fear  that  when  he  has  preached  Christ 
he,  too,  may  be  cast  away.  It  is  the  path  to 
certainty,  and  certainty  is  the  path  to  peace. 
For  the  intellect  is  a  blind  alley.  The  surest 
conclusions  of  science  rest  upon  assumptions 
which  can  never  be  proved.  When  we  assume 
that  things  fall  into  fixed  classes,  that  law  is 
universal,  that  the  order  of  nature  is  uniform,  that 


THE  INNER  CHAMBER  61 

the  cosmos  is  rational  and  truthful  and  intelligible 
we  are  assuming  that  which  faith  can  supply 
but  reason  can  never  demonstrate.  Nay  more, 
when  we  bank  upon  the  trustworthiness  of  our 
own  mental  processes  we  are  making  a  very 
vast  assumption  indeed;  for  sanity  and  insanity, 
so  far  as  we  are  able  to  prove,  may  be  only  a 
matter  of  majorities.  If  there  were  more  of  the 
insane  than  of  us  who  call  ourselves  sane,  they 
might  some  day  be  outside  looking  in  and  we 
inside  looking  out.  In  the  sense  of  demonstration 
science  knows  nothing  of  the  nature  of  matter  or 
force,  nothing  of  the  origin  of  motion,  nothing 
of  the  beginnings  of  sensation,  consciousness, 
thought,  speech,  or  free  will.  Says  Professor 
Huxley,  ''Man  is  conscious  of  his  own  mind  and 
of  certain  shadow  shapes  projected  thereon,  but 
outside  these  limits  he  cannot  travel."  Kant 
said  that  the  human  understanding  is  an  island 
and  by  its  very  nature  inclosed  within  unchange- 
able boundaries.  It  is  the  country  of  truth,  but 
surrounded  by  a  wild  and  stormy  ocean,  the 
special  abode  of  phantoms,  where  many  a  bank 
of  ice,  soon  to  melt  away,  holds  out  a  lying  promise 
of  new  regions;  and  while  it  perpetually  deceives 


62  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

the  seafarer  with  the  faint  hope  of  discoveries  it 
continually  entangles  him  in  adventures  from 
which  he  can  never  get  loose  and  which  he  can 
never  bring  to  any  result. 

"Myself  when  young  did  eagerly  frequent 
Doctor  and  Saint,  and  heard  great  Argument 
About  it  and  about;  but  evermore 
Came  out  by  the  same  Door  where  in  I  went." 

What  then?  Is  there  no  such  thing  as  certainty 
and  peace?  Yes,  thank  God,  there  is.  Not  the 
certainty  of  mathematical  demonstration,  but 
one  infinitely  deeper  and  better,  the  certainty 
of  life.  Science  assumes  the  validity  of  reason 
because  it  must  do  so  in  order  to  think.  Faith 
assumes  the  validity  of  the  religious  instincts 
because  we  must  do  so  in  order  to  live.  It  is  a 
larger  thing  to  live  than  even  to  think.  None  can 
think  without  living.  Some  do  live  without 
thinking.  Certainty  is  not  produced  by  the 
coercion  of  data  from  without,  but  by  the  adjust- 
ment of  the  life  within  to  the  life  about  us.  When 
that  adjustment  has  been  normally  made,  then 
we  know,  we  realize  truth,  not  by  the  dull, 
flickering  candle  of  reason,  but  by  the  swift,  sure 
flash  of  intuition.    ''Whereas  I  was  blind,  now  I 


THE  INNER  CHAMBER  63 

see."     Be  assured  that  no  system  can  ever  live 

which  vetoes  the  demands  of  the  rehgious  nature. 

Be  assured  that  life  is  a  larger  thing  than  logic. 

Be  assured  that  truth  is  more  than  facts;  that 

truth  is  facts  plus  relations,  plus  environment, 

plus  atmosphere;  and  that  the  deeper  things  of 

life  can  never  yield  themselves  to  technical  analysis. 

When,   as  Professor  James  put  it,   you  reduce 

the  Fifth  Symphony  of  Beethoven  to  the  scraping 

of  a  horse's  hairs  over  the  intestines  of  a  cat  you 

have  a  materialistic  analysis,  but  you  have  missed 

the  soul  of  the  truth.    The  mother  knows  more  of 

life  than  the  sociologist,  and  the  father  than  the 

philosopher.    And  still  it  stands  true  that  except 

we  become  as  little  children  we  cannot  enter  the 

Kingdom  of  heaven.    Now  the  impregnable  logic 

of   the    Christian    minister    is    this,    that   when 

materialism  has  analyzed  our  faith  and  plucked 

it  to  pieces  by  rigorous,  intellectual  process,  then 

the  demands  of  life  itself  compel  him  to  give  back 

to  us  the  very  things  which  he  tried  to  destroy. 

As  Browning  has  put  it  in  his  ''Christmas  Eve": 

When  the  Critic  had  done  his  best, 
And  the  pearl  of  price,  at  reason's  test, 
Lay  dust  and  ashes  levigable 
On  the  Profess-or's  lecture-table — 


64  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

When  we  looked  for  the  inference  and  monition 
That  our  faith,  reduced  to  such  condition, 
Be  swept  forwith  to  its  natural  dust-hole — 
He  bids  us,  when  we  least  expect  it. 
Take  back  our  faith — if  it  be  not  just  whole, 

"Go  home  and  venerate  the  myth 
I  thus  have  experimented  with — 
This  man,  continue  to  adore  him 
Rather  than  all  who  went  before  him. 
And  all  who  ever  followed  after!" 

He  who  knows  that  adorable  Man  will  find  that 
as  deep  answers  to  deep  the  hearts  of  men  will 
leap  to  his  message.  He  will  see  once  and  again 
the  strange,  new  light  on  sin-hardened  faces. 
He  will  hear  the  fond  old  faith  confessed  by 
repentant  lips.  He  will  behold  the  scoffer  rise 
"smitten  across  the  forehead  by  that  light  which 
falls  from  out  those  celestial  spaces  whence  all 
men  come  and  whither  all  souls  haste." 


CROSSES  AND  COMPENSATIONS 


'The  Lord  had  a  job  for  me,  but  I  had  so  much  to  do 
1  said,  'You  get  somebody  else,  or  wait  till  I  get  through.' 
I  don't  know  how  the  Lord  came  out,  but  he  seemed  to 

get  along — 
But  I  felt  kind  of  sneaking  like — knowed  I'd  done  God 

wrong — 
One  day  I  needed  the  Lord,  needed  him  right  away — 
And  he  never  answered  me  at  all,  but  I  could  hear  him  say — 
Down  in  my  accusin'  heart — 'Nigger,  I'se  got  too  much 

to  do; 
You  get  somebody  else,  or  wait  till  I  get  through.' 
Now  when  the  Lord  have  a  job  for  me  I  never  tries  to  shirk 
I  drops  what  I  have  on  hand  and  does  the  good  Lord's 

work; 
And  my  affairs  can  run  along,  or  wait  till  I  get  through, 
Nobody  else  can  do  the  job  that  God's  marked  out  for  you." 


VII 

Crosses  and  Compensations 

By  the  very  terms  of  his  caUing  the  prophet 
must  needs  endure  hardness  as  a  good  soldier  of 
Jesus  Christ.  For  him  sacrifice  is  not  a  momen- 
tary impulse,  but  a  lifelong  principle.  Through 
the  period  of  the  recent  war  there  were  many  who 
experienced  the  first  test  of  real,  altruistic  service, 
and  who  on  a  flood  tide  of  emotionalism  swung 
out  into  passionate  self-dedication;  but  it  was 
only  for  the  moment.  Many  of  these  have  now, 
alas,  returned  to  the  fleshpots  and  are  gaily  joy- 
riding through  orgies  of  excess  and  indulgence. 
But  the  man  who  turns  his  face  toward  the  Chris- 
tian ministry  enters  not  for  a  brief,  romantic, 
and  passionate  self-immolation;  rather  does  he 
face  for  his  whole  life  long  a  deliberate  program 
whose  vital  principle  is  to  be  found  in  stead- 
fast self-denial.  **A  man  must  live,"  whined  a 
timeserver  to  Thomas  Carlyle.  *'I  fail  to  see  the 
necessity,"  retorted  the  gruff  Scotch  philosopher. 
The  minister  must  not  count  his  life  dear  unto 
himself,   but   be   willing  even   to   sacrifice   that 

67 


68  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

primal  instinct  to  the  spiritual  imperatives  of 
his  high  calling.  "Skin  for  skin,  yea,  all  that  a 
man  hath  will  he  give  for  his  life,"  was  the  Devil's 
maxim.  But  the  minister  follows  a  Leader  who 
charged  men  to  take  up  their  cross  and  follow  him, 
and  who  counted  not  his  own  life  dear  unto  himself. 

And  the  most  difficult  thing  about  it  is  that 
this  sacrificial  principle  does  not  crystallize  in 
one  great  romantic  crisis,  but  must  be  manifest 
through  years  of  routine  heroisms  amid  the  little 
vexations,  the  "briers  that  sting  and  fret,"  of 
daily  life.  He  must  put  his  calling  ahead  of  his 
bodily  comfort.  Said  a  great  minister  of  old, 
writing  to  his  friend,  "The  cloak  that  I  left  at 
Troas  with  Carpus,  bring  when  thou  comest,  and 
the  books,  especially  the  parchments,"  which 
last  were  doubtless  the  precious  pages  of  the 
Holy  Scripture.  And  these  three  items,  min- 
istering in  turn  to  the  physical,  the  intellectual, 
and  the  spiritual  needs  of  the  man,  were  in  the 
order  of  an  ascending  climax.  Another  great 
preacher,  Erasmus,  wrote  in  his  diary,  "When 
I  get  some  money  I  will  get  me  some  Greek  books 
and  then  some  clothes." 

The  modem  prophet,  moreover,  is  dealing  some- 


CROSSES  AND  COMPENSATIONS  69 

times  with  men  whose  ears  are  deaf  and  whose 
hearts  are  hardened  to  the  great  evangel.  Foolish 
men  say  glibly  that  the  plain  preaching  of  a 
simple  gospel  will  always  draw  crowds.  It  is 
the  utterance  of  superficial  folly.  The  common 
people  did  not  always  hear  Jesus  gladly.  They 
crowded  to  him  for  a  while,  but  he  himself  had 
no  illusions.  They  sought  him,  he  said,  not  from 
spiritual  motives  but  from  mercenary  motives, 
not  because  they  saw  the  spiritual  sign  but  be- 
cause they  did  eat  of  the  loaves  and  were  filled. 
And  when  at  the  very  crisis  of  his  ministry  he 
spoke  in  plain  terms  his  message  of  personal 
salvation  through  vital  union  with  himself,  by 
faith,  the  multitude  went  away  from  him.  Pro- 
testing, excusing,  explaining,  each  with  his 
separate  alibi,  they  slunk  away.  Only  the  little 
inner  group  of  intimates  remained;  because,  as 
they  confessed  in  a  kind  of  dazed  fashion,  they 
had  nowhere  else  to  go.  During  the  last  half  of 
his  ministry  Jesus  was  not  a  popular  preacher  in 
the  attraction  of  great  masses  of  men,  but  worked 
largely  at  the  training  of  smaller  groups  in 
retired  places.  So,  too,  his  prophets  will  not 
necessarily    be    popular    preachers.      They    deal 


70  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

with  souls  who,  as  James  Russell  Lowell  once 
said,  have  had  the  thought  of  God  fattened  out 
of  them.  Sometimes,  too,  with  those  who  have 
had  the  thought  of  God  frozen  out  of  them  in 
these  days  when  the  modern  man  has  succeeded 
in  making  "science  popular,  metaphysics  in- 
telligible, and  vice  respectable."  The  minister 
deals  also  with  men  and  women  in  whom  religion 
has  assumed  forms  of  piosity.  He  endures  the 
criticisms  of  the  crabbed.  He  must  humor  the 
crotchets  of  Auntie  Doleful.  He  is  thwarted  by 
the  narrowness  of  the  ignorant,  and  the  inertia 
of  those  who  perish  for  want  of  vision.  Sometimes 
in  his  official  boards  he  must  meet  and  deal  with 
the  selfishness  of  the  unconverted  or  the  half 
converted.  And  once  and  again  he  is  impelled 
to  cry,  in  the  old  metrical  translation  of  David, 

"Alas  for  me,  but  I  so  long 
Sojourn  with  Mesech's  godless  race, 
And  near  the  tents  of  Kedar's  throng 
Am  forced  to  make  my  dwelling  place." 

Moreover,  he  shares  with  the  doctor  the  pri- 
vation of  having  no  time  that  he  can  call  his  own. 
A  minister  who  has  never  spent  all  night  at  the 
bedside  of  the  dying,  and  then  been  compelled 


CROSSES  AND  COMPENSATIONS  71 

in  physical  weakness  and  weariness  to  preach  the 
next  day,  has  really  never  yet  made  proof  of  his 
high  calling.  He  goes  on  vacation,  and  unless 
he  is  beyond  the  reach  of  the  telegraph  he  may  be 
called  at  any  time  back  to  ministry  in  the  emer- 
gencies of  sickness  and  death.  He  works  con- 
stantly at  the  expense  of  nerves  and  brain  cells. 
Those  fatuous  people  who  at  the  close  of  a  service 
with  unpardonable  banality  assure  him  that 
they  ''enjoyed  his  talk,"  do  not  realize  that,  if  it 
was  a  real  message,  he  was  giving  them  not 
simply  speech,  but  lifeblood;  that  if  he  had  opened 
a  vein  and  let  the  warm  current  fall,  drop  by  drop, 
upon  the  platform,  it  would  have  meant  no 
greater  wasting  of  vital  energies.  Physical  labor 
means  that  happy  condition  where  ''good  digestion 
waits  on  appetite,  and  health  on  both."  "The 
sleep  of  a  laboring  man  is  sweet,  whether  he  eat 
little  or  much."  But  the  enforced  sedentary  life 
of  the  studious  minister,  with  the  constant  strain 
on  brain  and  nerves,  brings  often  the  blue  devils 
of  dyspepsia  and  insomnia.  He  is  working  con- 
stantly under  a  sense  of  unfinished  tasks,  of 
responsibilities  unmet,  of  homes  unvisited,  and 
of  schedules  broken  up  by  emergency  calls. 


72  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

So  it  sometimes  happens  that  men  break  under 
the  strain,  or  what  is  worse,  that  men  quit  under 
it.  Then  appears  in  the  popular  magazine  the 
bitter  article  headed  ''Why  I  Left  the  Ministry." 
Usually  the  man  who  abandons  his  high  calling 
for  a  secular  piu-suit  has  simply  quit  because  he 
was  a  quitter.  To  charge,  as  Harold  Bell  Wright, 
the  novelist,  and  others  have  charged,  that  the 
minister  quits  because  he  has  no  independence 
of  thought  or  speech,  puts  the  author  of  such  a 
statement  under  the  disadvantage  of  standing 
for  a  bare  and  unmitigated  falsehood.  A  minister 
of  tact  and  courage  can  be  the  most  independent 
man  in  the  community.  In  one  of  our  great 
cities  I  have  seen  the  ministers  banded  together 
practically  to  a  man  in  defiant  opposition  to  the 
ruling  political  machine,  when  every  other  pro- 
fession was  bowing  down  in  the  Temple  of 
Rimmon;  and  when  prominent  and  powerful 
political  controllers  occupied  positions  of  influence 
in  their  congregations.  Of  course,  if  the  minister 
lacks  either  tact  or  courage  he  cannot  thus  main- 
tain his  independence.  There  is  no  license  for 
the  man  who  proves  himself  to  be  a  lineal  de- 
scendant of  the  first  talking  animal  mentioned 


CROSSES  AND  COMPENSATIONS  73 

in  the  Scriptures,  who  needs  not  to  make  a  fool 
of  himself  because  Providence  has  already  done 
it  for  him.  Some  ministers  have  mistaken  their 
prejudices  for  their  principles,  scolding  for  witness- 
bearing,  vehement  denunciations  for  positive 
testimony,  bluster  for  courage,  and  obstinacy 
for  firmness.  Even  the  most  tactful  and  coura- 
geous of  public  men  will  sometimes  be  involved 
in  storm  clouds  of  misrepresentation.  But  always 
he  will  win  in  the  end  if  he  does  but  remember, 
as  George  Lewes  once  said,  that  when  the 
wanderer  has  lost  his  path  in  the  storm  of 
dust  there  is  nothing  to  do  but  to  wait  till  the 
stars  come  out. 

It  should  be  said,  moreover,  quite  frankly  and 
even  bluntly,  that  there  is  considerable  misplaced 
pathos  and  unworthy  shedding  of  tears  over  the 
hardships  of  clerical  life.  The  crosses  of  the 
preacher  after  all  do  not  kill  him,  and  the  figures 
will  show  this.  One  of  the  oldest  and  best  of 
insurance  companies  in  America  owes  its  splendid 
record  to  the  fact  that  its  patrons  are  confined 
to  the  Christian  ministry,  and  that  these  prove 
especially  good  risks,  as  the  tables  of  mortality 
will  readily  show.     Distorted  and  morbid  views 


74  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

of  ministerial  life  have  been  foisted  on  the  public, 
either  unwittingly  or  deliberately.  The  writer 
of  popular  novels  and  the  moving-picture  pro- 
ducers have  been  equally  guilty.  The  stage  and 
movie  minister,  if  he  be  a  Protestant,  is  uniformly 
caricatured.  As  a  rule  the  respect  paid  to  the 
calling  by  film  producers  is  limited  to  Roman 
Catholic  priests.  It  would  be  humorous,  if 
it  were  not  at  the  same  time  tragic,  that  the 
man  on  the  street,  with  perhaps  little  oppor- 
tunity of  acquaintance  in  ministerial  life,  gets 
his  impressions  from  these  faulty  and  biased 
sources. 

The  minister  lives  the  most  balanced  possible 
intellectual  life.  He  realizes  as  does  no  other 
class  of  men  the  answer  to  that  fine  prayer  of 
Tennyson's,  ''Let  knowledge  grow  from  more  to 
more,  and  more  of  reverence  in  us  dwell."  A 
great  preacher  and  theologian,  on  his  retirement 
from  active  service  recently,  announced  two 
ambitions  for  the  remaining  years  of  his  life.  First 
he  would  go  around  the  world  and  study  every 
type  of  people.  And  then  he  said  he  would  read 
throughout  the  "Encyclopedia  Brittanica."  What- 
ever one  might  think  of  this  program  for  a  happy 


CROSSES  AND  COMPENSATIONS  75 

old  age,  it  indicates  the  cosmopolitan,  the  cyclo- 
pedic character  of  a  minister's  interests.  Every- 
thing is  grist  that  comes  to  his  mill.  Rightly 
considered,  theology  is  the  one  great  balancing 
science  which  has  a  place  for  everything  and  puts 
everything  in  its  place.  Practically,  too,  the 
preacher  studies  life  in  all  of  its  phases.  The 
doctor  knows  his  patients  only  when  things  have 
gone  wrong.  This  too  is  largely  true  of  the  lawyer. 
The  minister  knows  them  when  they  have  gone 
wrong  and  when  they  are  going  rightly,  in  the 
crises  of  joy  and  the  crises  of  sorrow,  in  the  best 
moments  and  the  worst,  in  the  storm  and  in 
the  sunshine,  in  the  valley  of  decision  and  on  the 
plains  of  service.  He  has  the  fine  fellowship  of 
books.  Nearly  always  the  windows  of  music  are 
open  to  his  soul.  He  has  entree  with  the  cultured 
minds  and  homes  of  his  community. 

He  has,  too,  what  is  perhaps  the  best  environ- 
ment for  his  family  of  any  profession.  Not  an 
ideal  environment,  certainly,  but  more  nearly 
an  ideal  one  than  almost  any  other  type  of  home. 
It  is  tragic  to  upset  a  popular  illusion  about  the 
uniform  delinquency  of  the  minister's  child,  but 
as  a  matter  of  fact  the  saying  that  the  minister's 


76  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

boy  typically  turns  out  badly  is  an  interesting 
saying,  except  that  it  happens  to  be  a  lie.  A  study 
of  great  men  for  generations  would  reveal  that  a 
larger  percentage  of  our  best  public  leadership 
comes  out  of  ministerial  homes  than  from  any  other 
source.  More  ministers'  sons  enter  the  ministry 
itself  than  any  other  class  of  men  except  farmers' 
sons,  and  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  farmer 
outnumbers  the  minister  manyfold.  His  children 
are  brought  up  with  good  books  and  good  music 
and  the  example  of  the  intellectual  life,  with 
high  ideals  presented  both  at  church  and  in 
the  home;  and  the  figures  will  show  that  what- 
ever the  average  minister  will  deny  himself 
he  will  see  to  it  that  his  child  gets  an 
education.  In  an  age  of  crass  and  unspeakable 
selfishness,  which  has  been  content  to  allow  the 
minister's  nominal  salary  to  remain  at  the  same 
figure  while  the  value  of  the  dollar  he  has  received 
has  depreciated  eighty-five  per  cent,  he  will  still 
see  to  it  that  his  boy  and  his  girl  get  to  college 
and  have  a  chance  to  develop  the  life  possibilities 
of  a  soul  which  only  a  thorough  education  can 
unloose.  And  yet  there  are  those  who  have  said 
he  is  a  poor  financier.    As  a  rule  he  can  finance 


CROSSES  AND  COMPENSATIONS  77 

more  forward-looking  enterprises  on  less  resource 
than  any  man  living. 

There  are,  too,  the  unspeakable  compensations 
of  his  friendships.  These  grow  richer,  sweeter, 
and  more  satisfying  with  the  passing  years.  When 
the  little  ones  that  he  has  baptized  grow  up  to 
young  manhood  and  womanhood,  are  guided 
through  conversion  crises  of  adolescence,  and 
inspired  through  a  course  of  college  education 
and  in  the  choice  of  their  life  work,  are  married  by 
him  after  a  while,  and  later  bring  their  own  little 
ones  for  his  blessing;  when  he  has  watched  in  the 
home  through  the  storm  and  stress  of  life's  great 
tragedies  that  have  beaten  on  those  he  loves,  and 
has  helped  them  through;  he  knows  the  deep 
satisfying  secret  of  a  friendship  that  can  really 
never  be  known  anywhere  else,  unless  it  be  in 
the  work  of  the  good  Christian  doctor.  Lives 
are  grappled  to  him  by  silken  ties  of  love  that 
grip  stronger  than  hooks  of  steel.  His  spiritual 
children  rise  up  to  call  him  blessed.  For  myself, 
when  I  even  try  to  speak  of  these  friendships 
something  chokes  within  me  and  I  cannot  give 
it  utterance.  Only,  I  understand  how  Browning 
felt  when  he  sang, 


78  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

How  should  I  conceive 
What  a  heaven  there  may  be,  let  it  but  resemble 
Earth  myself  have  known;  no  bliss  that's  finer,  fuller, 
Only  bliss  that  lasts,  they  say,  and  fain  would  I  believe. 

All  this  is  only  one  phase  of  the  supreme  joy 
that  comes  to  a  life  of  service.  Pleasure  is  not  to 
be  gained  as  we  make  it  our  main  objective.  It 
is  a  by-product  of  unselfish  service.  Omar,  the  old 
Persian  poet,  whose  philosophy  of  life  was  that  of 
selfish  indulgence,  is  the  most  melancholy  of 
great  singers.  Even  his  mirth  is  nothing  but  a 
pale  smile.  But  Browning,  who  bade  men  forget 
themselves  in  service  to  others,  found  a  joy  so 
great  that  heaven  to  him  \yas  nothing  more  than 
the  friendships  of  earth  made  permanent.  I 
want  no  better  heaven  either,  than  to  know  that 
when  the  scenes  of  this  life  fail,  my  friends  shall 
receive  me  into  everlasting  habitations.  And  I 
shall  know  that  at  his  right  hand  there  are 
pleasures  for  evermore. 


THE  TRUMPET  CALL 


'  I  believe  in  human  kindness 
Large  among  the  sons  of  men, 
Nobler  far  in  willing  blindness 
Than  in  censure's  keenest  ken. 
I  believe  in  self-denial, 
In  its  secret  throb  of  joy, 
In  the  love  that  lives  through  trial, 
Dying  not,  though  death  destroy. 

*  I  believe  in  love  renewing 
All  that  sin  has  swept  away. 
Leaven-like  its  work  pursuing 
Night  by  night  and  day  by  day; 
In  the  power  of  its  remolding. 
In  the  grace  of  its  reprieve. 

In  the  glory  of  beholding 
Its  perfection  I  believe. 

*  I  believe  in  love  eternal. 
Fixed  in  God's  unchanging  will, 
That  beneath  the  deep  infernal 
Hath  a  depth  that's  deeper  still: 
In  its  patience,  its  endurance 
To  forbear  and  to  retrieve, 

In  the  large  and  full  assurance 
Of  its  triumph  I  believe." 


VIII 
The  Trumpet  Call 

The  times  in  which  we  Hve  are  desperate.  He 
who  is  without  God  would  indeed  be  without 
hope  in  this  present  evil  world.  The  darkest 
hour  of  the  late  war  held  great  physical  menace, 
but  never  so  great  a  moral  menace  as  the  period 
of  slump  and  degeneration  in  the  spiritual  fiber 
of  men  which  has  come  as  the  dreadful  aftermath 
of  war.  As  some  one  said  at  Paris  during  the 
Peace  Conference,  "We  made  a  war  to  end  war, 
now  we  are  making  a  peace  to  end  peace."  Parti- 
san malice,  narrow  obstinacy,  reaction  toward 
national  selfishness,  peanut  politics,  have  been 
witnessed  in  every  allied  country. 

Consider  the  tragedy  and  menace  of  Russia. 
Delivered  out  of  the  tyranny  of  the  Romanoffs,  she 
has  plunged,  first,  into  the  far  more  degrading 
tyranny  of  the  proletariat,  and  then  into  military 
dictatorship.  Her  house,  empty,  swept,  and 
garnished  of  the  evil  spirit  of  imperial  autocracy, 
has  been  occupied  by  the  seven  worse  devils  who 
pillage  and  murder  in  the  name  of  Bolshevism. 

81 


82  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

Consider  Germany,  defeated  by  force  of  arms, 
yet  unsubdued  in  spirit,  sullenly  smothering  the 
rage  for  revenge  which  will  grimly  bide  its  time 
awaiting  another  day.  Menaced  by  the  constant 
danger  of  royalist  and  militarist  reaction,  she 
has  saved  herself  only  by  the  making  of  dangerous 
terms  with  the  most  radical  elements  of  her 
industrial  life.  How  fallen  the  glory  of  Martin 
Luther,  of  Goethe,  of  Beethoven!  The  devasta- 
tions of  war  did  not  visit  her  borders  in  the 
material  sense,  but  the  splendid  temple  of  her 
moral  and  intellectual  and  aesthetic  glory  lies 
wrecked  and  ruined. 

In  France  fierce  cross  currents  of  social  unrest  and 
rising  tides  of  radicalism  give  pause  to  thoughtful 
men,  and  make  the  historian  wonder  whether  the 
"red,  fool  fury  of  the  Seine"  may  some  day  be  re- 
peated on  a  larger  scale.  When  we  remember  that 
Clemenceau,  the  Tiger,  the  saviour  of  France, 
whom  we,  across  the  Atlantic,  counted  the  idol 
of  his  people,  has  been  hissed  and  hooted  by 
thousands  of  radicals  who  packed  the  streets  for 
blocks,  a  mass  of  raging  humanity,  we  think  of 
that  other  mob  which  marched  to  Versailles  long 
years  ago  clamoring  for  bread  or  blood. 


THE  TRUMPET  CALL  83 

Look  at  Italy,  standing  to-day  on  the  thin  crust 
of  a  volcano  whose  smoldering  passions  of  social 
revolt  threaten  possibilities  of  eruption  more 
terrible  than  any  ever  witnessed  from  her  own 
Vesuvius. 

Japan,  with  her  military  group  still  in  the 
ascendancy,  faces  the  rising  tide  of  social  and  in- 
dustrial unrest,  and  faces,  too,  the  malign  hatred  of 
the  whole  Eastern  world,  which,  rightly  or  wrongly, 
looks  upon  the  Island  Kingdom  as  the  Prussia  of 
the  Orient.  More  than  a  century  ago  Napoleon, 
speaking  of  China,  said,  ''When  that  sleeping 
giant  wakes  let  the  world  beware."  And  the 
sleeping  giant  is  waking,  roused  by  the  alarm 
clock  of  war,  rubbing  from  his  slant  eyes  the  dust 
of  centuries  and  millenniums.  But  alas,  the  giant 
wakes  to  Western  intelligence,  to  Western  in- 
ventions, to  Western  fraud  and  graft  and  cor- 
ruption; while  the  Church,  playing  at  her  great 
task  of  foreign  missions,  has  not  begun  to  arouse 
this  giant  to  the  spiritual  forces  which  alone  have 
saved    Western    civilization    from    utter    decay. 

England,  adept  master  at  the  handling  of  col- 
onies— a  master  trained  through  certain  severe 
experiences  on   the  American   continent  nearly 


84  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

a  century  and  a  half  ago — is  to-day  facing  colonial 
problems  ominous  with  possibilities  and  well- 
nigh  insoluble  in  character.  In  India  the  constant 
mutterings  of  nationalistic  and  tribal  revolt, 
.and  in  Egypt  a  great  river  of  anti-foreign  passion 
broad  and  deep  as  the  Nile,  so  complicate  the 
Eastern  problem  that  the  empire  on  which  the 
sun  never  sets  faces  the  most  serious  crisis  in 
its  world  administration.  While,  coming  a  little 
nearer  home,  we  see  Lloyd  George,  like  Macbeth 
of  old,  standing  perplexed,  while  the  three  weird 
sisters,  the  witches  of  Racial  Hate  and  Religious 
Hate  and  Class  Hate,  are  dancing  their  devils' 
dance  around  that  seething,  bubbling,  Irish  stew. 

"Round  about  the  cauldron  go; 
In  the  poisoned  entrails  throw. 
Toad,  that  under  cold  stone 
Days  and  nights  has  thirty-one 
Swelter' d  venom  sleeping  got, 
Boil  thou  first  i'  the  charmed  pot. 
Double,  double  toil  and  trouble; 
Fire  burn  and  cauldron  bubble." 

Nowhere  in  all  literature  is  there  a  more  accurate 
description  of  the  Irish  situation. 

There  was  a  great  preacher  in  days  of  old  whose 
name   was  Amos.     His  homiletic   method   was 


THE  TRUMPET  CALL  85 

that  kind  of  ascending  climax  which  began  with 
nations  most  remote,  drew  nearer  and  nearer  his 
own  country,  and  at  last  drove  his  passionate 
shafts  of  denunciation  into  the  festering  heart 
of  the  wrongs  in  his  beloved  homeland.  God 
give  us  an  hour  of  Amos  in  these  tragic  times! 
He  would  have  something  to  say  to  Russia  and 
Germany  and  France  and  Italy;  to  Japan  and 
China  and  England  and  Ireland;  but  we  would 
find  at  the  very  center  of  his  burning  indictment 
the  sins  of  our  own  America.  The  slump,  war 
weariness,  and  the  moral  and  spiritual  shell 
shock  of  war's  aftermath  have  reacted  on  America 
as  well  as  on  Europe.  We  have  lost — to  put  it 
in  a  single  grim  phrase — God  help  us!  we  have 
lost  the  moral  leadership  of  an  organized  world. 
The  brooding  ghosts  of  that  fine  altruism  which 
swept  us  through  the  war  to  glorious  victory  must 
now  cry  ''Ichabod, .  .  .the  glory  is  departed."  We 
might  have  put  ourselves  at  the  head  of  all  the 
idealists  the  world  over  in  leading  the  nations 
toward  the  better  world  that  is  to  be.  We  might 
have  strengthened  the  hands  of  the  progressive 
groups  in  every  nation.  For  the  present  we  have 
lost  that  supreme  opportunity,  through  a  series 


86  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

of  tragic  mischances,  the  responsibiUty  for  which 
does  not  rest  exclusively  at  either  end  of  Penn- 
sylvania Avenue  in  Washington.  Sir  Horace 
Walpole  once  said,  "I  could  be  proud  of  my 
country  if  it  were  not  for  my  countrymen."  No 
Christian  man  can  say  this;  because,  when  it  can 
function  normally,  experience  has  shown  that  the 
heart  of  America  is  sound  and  true.  Certainly, 
however,  one  might  paraphrase  the  old  English 
cynic  and  say,  "I  could  be  proud  of  my  country 
if  it  were  not  for  some  of  my  countrymen." 
Unfortunately,  too,  a  humiliating  minority  in 
both  of  our  great  political  organizations  has 
been  in  a  position  to  take  advantage  of  our  cum- 
brous and  complicated  peace-making  machinery 
to  hinder  and  thwart  the  conscience  of  America, 
which  had  highly  resolved  that  "our  sacred  dead 
should  not  die  in  vain,"  but  that  the  flowers 
should  bloom  over  their  graves  in  a  new  world 
which  should  live,  not  by  fear  and  force,  but  by 
faith  and  friendship. 

But  this  is  no  time  for  futile  regrets  or  unfeeling 
denunciations.  Let  the  dead  past  bury  its  dead, 
and  each  man  concerned  in  it  prepare  to  meet 
his  God  in  the  Great  Assize.    Unto  the  old  lost 


THE  TRUMPET  CALL  87 

opportunity  speak  the  words  of  the  Master  in 
the  Garden,  ''Sleep  on  now,  and  take  your  rest." 
But  girding  ourselves  for  the  struggle  that  yet 
confronts  us,  let  us  hear  his  ringing  summons, 
"Arise,  let  us  be  going.'' 

Henry  van  Dyke  has  somewhere  said  that  the 
finest  line  in  Tennyson's  poems  occurs  in  that 
dramatic  scene  where  King  Arthur  bids  farewell 
to  his  guilty  Queen  Guinevere,  turns  his  back  on 
the  irrevocable  past,  faces  the  struggle  of  the 
future,  and  cries, 

"Now  must  I  hence. 
Through  the  thick  night  I  hear  the  trumpet  blow." 

The  world  can  yet  be  saved  if  men  who 
are  kings  and  priests  unto  God,  turning  their 
backs  on  the  irrevocable  past,  shall  face  the 
great  "battle  in  the  west"  upon  whose  issue  rests 
the  future  of  the  civilized  world.  If  the  things 
fall  for  which  the  preacher  stands  the  world 
falls  with  them.  If  our  vision  perish,  the  driving 
power  that  moves  the  world  is  at  a  standstill. 
Many  years  ago  a  noted  public  leader  told  in 
my  hearing  a  little  story  of  the  old  man  who  kept 
the  farm  of  Daniel  Webster  in  Massachusetts. 


88  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

He  had  but  two  articles  of  creed.  The  first  was 
this:  "I  believe  in  the  American  Union."  The 
second  was  this:  "I  believe  in  Daniel  Webster." 
These  two  simple  beliefs  were  the  motive  power 
of  the  man's  whole  life.  They  were  the  central 
sun  around  which  his  whole  being  revolved.  But 
there  came  a  time  when  a  brilliant  young  senator 
from  South  Carolina,  Robert  Hayne  by  name,  rose 
up  in  the  United  States  Senate  and  delivered  a 
magnificent  oration  which  seemed  to  have  blotted 
this  sun  out  in  darkness.  Critics  agreed  that  this 
great  speech  had  demolished  the  theory  of  the 
American  Union,  had  demolished  Daniel  Webster. 
The  address,  quoted  in  the  Boston  Intelligencer, 
a  weekly  paper  of  that  time,  came  down  to  the 
farm.  The  old  man  read  it  and  promptly  went  to 
bed.  There  was  nothing  left  to  live  for,  he  said, 
and  he  did  not  care  to  go  on.  For  a  week  he  lay 
there,  refusing  to  be  comforted.  With  the  next 
week,  however,  came  the  succeeding  copy  of  the 
Boston  Intelligencer,  containing  the  now  world- 
famous  reply  of  Webster  to  Hayne.  His  son 
John  took  the  paper  up  to  the  old  man's  bedside. 
''Father,"  said  he,  "here  is  Mr.  Webster's  reply 
to  Mr.  Hayne."     'Take  it  away,"  was  the  curt 


THE  TRUMPET  CALL  89 

reply,  "not  even  Daniel  could  answer  that  speech." 
But  John,  being  wise  in  his  generation,  left  the 
paper  by  the  bedside.  By  and  by  natural  curiosity 
began  to  work.  The  old  man  glanced  at  the 
opening  sentences  of  that  matchless  oration. 
Catching  the  tremendous  sweep  of  its  ponder- 
ous movement,  the  pulse  of  its  white-hot  pas- 
sion, the  rugged  grip  of  its  iron-bound  logic, 
he  read  on,  shivering  with  excitement,  read  it 
first  through  tears,  and  then  with  fiery  eyes  of 
exultation.  At  last  John,  eagerly  waiting  below, 
heard  a  giant  voice  roaring  down  the  stairway, 
''John,  John,  bring  up  my  boots!"  And  John 
brought  up  the  boots.  The  old  man  rose,  dressed 
himself,  put  on  his  boots,  and  went  out  once  more 
to  do  a  man's  work  in  a  man's  world.  Why? 
Because  the  thing  he  had  lost  had  been  restored 
to  him ;  because  personal  faith  and  personal  loyalty 
and  personal  love,  belief  in  the  future,  belief  in 
the  stability  of  our  most  sacred  ideals,  are  the 
factors  that  put  the  driving  power  into  all  human 
progress.  And  it  is  our  great  task  in  these  times  of 
doubt  and  fear  and  distrust  and  discontent  to 
bring  back  to  men  the  faith  and  loyalty  and  con- 
fidence, both  in  God  and  the  future,  which  would 


90  THE  RANGE  FINDERS 

impel  them  to  "put  on  the  boots"  and  to  go  out 
as  those  who  are  ''neither  children  nor  gods,  but 
men  in  a  world  of  men."  That  is  the  trumpet 
call  to  the  Christian  ministry. 

It  is  a  call  not  only  to  men  of  surpassing  talents 
and  commanding  intellect,  but  to  those  who,  \^ith 
five  talents  or  one,  have  been  near  enough  to  Christ 
that  they  have  learned  to  feel  deeply  and  intently, 
to  speak  out  boldly,  to  fear  nothing  but  sin,  and 
by  the  grace  of  God  never  to  quit. 

Many  years  ago  the  \vriter  heard  a  great 
preacher  tell  of  his  experience  as  a  professor  in 
one  of  our  theological  seminaries.  There  came  a 
very  witty  and  brilliant  lecturer,  with  a  taste  for 
epigi'ams,  who  remarked  among  other  things  that 
even  God  Almighty  could  not  put  a  four-inch 
stream  through  a  two-inch  pipe.  At  the  close  of 
the  lecture  a  discouraged  student  came  to  his 
teacher  and  said,  ' 'Professor,  I  am  a  two-inch 
pipe  all  right,  and  I  am  afraid  that  even  God 
Almighty  cannot  use  me."  And  that  wise  teacher 
said:  "My  boy,  it  all  depends  on  whether  you  are 
talking  about  water  or  electricity.  If  your  life  is  a 
current  of  electricity  its  effect  will  depend,  not 
on  the  size  of  the  current,  but  on  its  intensity, 


THE  TRUMPET  CALL  91 

not  on  the  amperage,  but  on  the  voltage."  So 
this  young  man,  encouraged  a  little,  went  out  of 
the  seminary  to  take  an  obscure  country  parish 
which  no  one  else  wanted.  And  for  six  months 
he  preached,  with  only  a  twofold  message.  Day 
after  day  he  hammered  it  home.  First:  '*We  are 
great  sinners."  Second:  "Christ  is  a  great 
Saviour."  But  he  hammered  it  home  with  such 
intensity,  with  such  tremendous  voltage,  that 
presently  people  began  to  say,  'Trobably  we  are 
great  sinners;  and  probably,  too,  Christ  is  a  great 
Saviour."  Soon  the  whole  countryside  was  roused 
and  swept  by  a  mighty  revival,  through  the 
ministry  of  a  man  who  had  little  amperage,  but 
much  voltage;  little  size,  but  much  intensity. 

The  fate  of  the  future  hangs  upon  one  supreme 
question:  Shall  we  get  enough  men  to  save  the 
world?  They  need  not  be  great  men.  But  they 
must  be  men  burning  with  the  intensity  of  a 
supreme  passion,  uplifted  and  steadied  by  a 
supreme  belief  in  a  victorious  Lord. 


